Creative Works: charity tie-ups, featuring The Body Shop, John Lewis and more
Welcome to The Drum’s Creative Works, in partnership with Adobe Stock, dedicated to showing the best creative work from around the globe.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, but this year is set to be a little different. After what has been a challenging time for everyone, many brands have shied away from their usual festive offerings, opting instead to work alongside charities in the hope of raising funds for valuable causes.
With spots from the likes of The Body Shop, John Lewis, Papa John’s and more, you can scroll down to see a selection of this year’s ads that are looking to do some good.
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Great Ormond Street Hospital: ‘Home For Christmas’
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity has brought out an animated film to bring to life the journey patients make from hospital to home at Christmas.
The film features a patient named Mia and her sister Amy who were treated at the hospital years apart for the same rare condition, chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). Mia was just three-weeks-old when she was admitted to the hospital with the rare neurological condition, returning home just in time to meet her big sister on Christmas Eve.
The Big Issue: ‘Remember Me?’
The Big Issue launched its first-ever Christmas Appeal film this year in order to help raise awareness of the need for support for its network of magazine vendors, who are facing an unprecedented period of hardship this winter.
The film features the fond recollections that Big Issue vendor Martin McKenzie has of his customers before the pandemic, and contrasts them with the far emptier streets that he faces when out selling the magazine in present times.
It also features a voiceover from Christopher Eccleston, a long-term supporter of the organisation who first appeared on the cover of the magazine in 1996 and who was recently appointed a Big Issue Brand Ambassador.
NHS: ‘The Gift’
This year’s NHS Christmas campaign, ‘The Gift’, shows that even Santa is in awe of the amazing NHS staff and volunteers working tirelessly to keep us safe.
Created by Iris in partnership with major brands such as Starbucks, Marmite, Kindred and Batiste, the work aims to help raise more vital funds for the NHS Charities Together Covid Appeal.
Marks and Spencer: ‘M&S Christmas Food’
In a year when charity funding has declined almost 25%, this Christmas M&S Food has announced it will donate £2m to good causes, saying it’s not a year for ’Christmas advertising fairytales’.
Central to this, M&S Food is shining a light on a number of important charities, partnering with nine world-famous actors who have added their unmistakable voices to nine brand new Christmas food ads, shot in its signature ’food porn’ style.
The star-studded voiceover cast, which includes Tom Hardy, Olivia Colman, Helen Mirren and Chiwetel Ejiofor, have all selected charities close to their hearts to which M&S Food will make a donation on their behalf.
And M&S is doing the same for customers. Every time a customer signs up to its sparks loyalty scheme shops at M&S in-store or online at M&S.com, it will donate to their selected charity, from a range of 35 different causes.
M&S Food will also donate an additional £1m across a diverse range of charities including Shelter, Together for Short Lives and the 35 Sparks charities that M&S supports. Through Sparks, M&S has donated £7.3m since 2015.
Walkers: ‘A Sausage CaRoll’
Walkers Crisps’ Christmas offering stars YouTuber and Christmas No.1 holder, LadBaby, with supporting roles from East 17’s Tony Mortimer, Walking in the Air singer Aled Jones and Walkers mainstay Gary Lineker.
In the spot, the gang performs a medley of Christmas carols with lyrics adapted to herald the arrival of Walkers’ new sausage roll flavoured crisps.
The ad was created in partnership with The Trussell Trust, a charity that supports food banks across the UK. The crisp brand has pledged to help LadBaby raise more money than ever in its name this Christmas. Walkers had already pledged £1m to The Trussell Trust earlier this year, as the charity needs more support than ever due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic.
Boots: ‘What the World Needs Now’
Boots has launched its Christmas campaign, centred around acts of kindness, care and great value for all. Boots ‘What the World Needs Now’ campaign recognises that it has been a year like no other and acts of care and kindness are what is needed most.
To help, Boots will provide hygiene essentials to some of the millions of people in the UK living in hygiene poverty, with a donation of £1m worth of products to The Hygiene Bank. Boots is also inviting customers to donate hygiene items to support those most in need this Christmas.
Papa John’s: ‘Giving More This Christmas’
In an effort to raise awareness and support two of the most prevalent issues the UK is currently facing – hunger and homelessness – Papa John’s launched its ‘Giving More This Christmas’ campaign, which sees the pizza delivery chain donating a chunk of its creative and marketing budgets to Crisis and the Trussell Trust.
To put the money, which would have otherwise been spent on creative designs and production costs, to better use, Papa John’s instead enlisted help from internal staff to design and create the assets for its Christmas 2020 campaign.
From limited-edition pizza boxes to the creation of its TV advert, the assets include simple hand-drawn and festive illustrations from the Papa John’s team, all printed in black in order for the brand to give more back.
The advert is set to the popular Christmas song, Deck the Halls, and features a simple creative concept, including pizza boxes decorated with marker pens.
John Lewis: ‘Give A Little Love’
Inspired by the response of the British public to the pandemic during the first wave and the ‘acts of kindness‘ that emerged from communities, for this year’s campaign John Lewis and Waitrose have come up with a pandemic theme of kindness and giving to charity, rather than giving presents – which dovetails with its new five-year purpose-led strategy.
Through ‘Give a Little Love‘, the partnership aims to raise £4m for the two charities, boosting FareShare‘s efforts to support those facing food poverty and Home-Start‘s initiatives for parents who need support. A further fund of £1m has been created to bring the charity partnership to life in-store.
The broad campaign is complemented by a two-minute spot created by long-term advertising agency partner Adam&eveDDB, which features nine different vignettes created by eight different artists, offering support to the creative industries that have struggled at the hands of the pandemic.
The Body Shop and Channel 4: ‘Unseen Kingdoms’
Marking its first-ever Christmas TV campaign, The Body Shop has teamed up with Channel 4 to illuminate the issue of female homelessness in the UK through the medium of spoken poetry.
’Unseen Kingdom’ shines a light on a hidden world all around us of 110,000 young people who exist in the background shadows of daily life, according to 2019 research by Centrepoint.
Showcasing the talent of spoken-word artist Rasheeda Page-Muir, the campaign gives life to this statistic by communicating individual tales of survival such as the story of Jamie who became homeless in her late teens but is now a dancer.
