Marc Lewis' Christmas ad rankings: Amazon's melodic boxes are heavy on air-filled packaging
The festive season is almost upon us – which means it’s time for advertisers to up their budgets and start producing shiny snow-covered campaigns again. This Christmas Marc Lewis, the highly-revered creative mind who leads the School of Communications Arts London, will review (in his opinion) the merits of some of the biggest brands' seasonal spots with a creative eye, separating the Christmas crackers from the turkeys.
We get to see workers dancing in a fulfillment centre, a bit like the old Quick Fit ads / Amazon
Well, this must be an example of art imitating life, because the Amazon 'Holidays' commercial from Lucky Generals comes heavy on air-filled packaging and not enough inside the box.
The big idea, if there is one, is that the smiling-face shape of the Amazon logo becomes a smiling face, which sings The Jackson’s Can You Feel It? while we cut from scene to scene of generic, standard clips from every middle-of-the-road Christmas commercial you have ever endured.
We get to see workers dancing in a fulfillment centre, a bit like the old Quick Fit ads. We get to see a sick boy in a hospital bed look up and smile at his Amazon box, in a scene almost certainly added because research told Amaazon it would make Mrs Jones at Acacia Avenue cry. We get to see two star-crossed lovers (one black, one white – obviously) clock each other carrying Amazon parcels and smile their best come-to-bed smile. We get to see workers on a building site behaving.
To be fair, my seven-year-old loved this commercial. My three-year-old likes anything. Neither of them has a credit card, though.
I reckon that my wife would like it too, but she cries during the reality show First Dates.
This commercial smacks of a lazy strategy, with generic mediocrity running through every frame. Two of my alumni made a set of brilliant commercials recently for Amazon Prime, which couldn’t be further from this Christmas commercial.
Lucky Generals? Yes, I suppose you must be.
Score out of 5?
3
Keep up with The Drum's 2018 Christmas coverage here.