The Clash for the Christmas Cracker: Celebrities vs Characters
Christmas: they call it the UK’s Super Bowl
Advertising agencies spend most of the year conceiving an ad in an effort to collect the coveted Christmas crown for themselves and their client. It’s a competitive field, with retailers in particular making it their biggest investment of the year. Often the biggest bets are made on famous faces with a hope that their popularity will help them cut through the clutter. Mariah Carey (Walkers), Elton John (John Lewis) and Jeff Goldblum (Currys PC World) are some of the celebrities who have been hired to help brands with their seasonal push.
2023 Christmas campaigns featuring celebrities
In 2023 Christmas campaigns starred a raft of celebrities including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Graham Norton, Rick Astley, Katherine Ryan, Michael Bublé, Tan France and Hannah Waddingham (twice).
You might be curious to know which one of these stars found themselves on System 1’s top 12 most effective Christmas ads for 2023? Surprisingly, not a single one of them.1
In fact, the only celebrities that made the list were Dawn French, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. However, they didn’t even appear as themselves but merely voiced characters for M&S Food’s campaign. I recently noted Andrew Tindall from System1 concluding that ‘use of celebrities in advertising does not generally lead to an increase in long- or short-term effectiveness’.2 Data from over 200 hours of Christmas marketing also led to System1 to name ‘using celebs’ as one of the five listed wrongs, saying that celebrities can be ‘hit or miss’.
ASDA x Buddy the Elf
This was a very different tone from 2022, where ITV and System1 named ASDA’s ‘Have Yourself a Merry Christmas’ as the winner of Christmas, with a 5.9 rating (as high as it gets).3 The spot starred Will Ferrell as Christmas character Buddy the Elf from the 2003 film Elf. System1 went on to award that campaign not only the crown for winning Christmas, but the even bigger prize of the most effective UK ad for the entire year amongst 25,000 tested.4
In fact, it was named as ‘one of the most emotionally effective Christmas ads’ ever tested.5 A huge win for ASDA and their agency Havas London. In 2023, ASDA ditched Buddy the Elf for Christmas song singing favourite Michael Buble. It failed to make System1’s top 12 Christmas ads of the year.6
Cubery gave the Michael Bublé spot 2 stars and 56 points, compared to Buddy the Elf’s 5 stars and 73 points. It claimed that the Buble spot “fell a little flat with viewers in comparison” because “it lacked the excitement and ‘wow factor’ that the nostalgia-inducing “Buddy the Elf” brought to the table in 2022”.7
How could a celebrity have starred in 2022’s most effective ad campaign, while celebrities generally failed to increase effectiveness in 2023?
The concept of the ads are quite similar, with both ‘recruits’ hired by ASDA as a special employee. Both campaigns launching in early November, so timing certainly wasn’t a factor. Both had delicious food and recognisable Christmas tunes.
There really is only one key difference to think of. It has to be Buddy.
Elf is widely considered to be Britain’s favourite Christmas film. For many across the country, it’s a tradition to watch Elf in December as a way to celebrate the festive season. With the film dating back to 2003, it now has generations of fans that love Buddy the Elf. By incorporating the character into their advertising, ASDA successfully tapped into existing positive emotions and an established fanbase.
There is no denying Michael Bublé’s talent and popularity. But Buddy the Elf, with his loveable personality and generational awareness, simply did a much better job for ASDA.
This conclusion is supported by Ipsos MORI research we commissioned in 2020 where we asked the UK public a series of questions about the use of characters, celebrities, music artists and sports stars in advertising. When asked which they most like to see in advertisements, the surveyed group chose a fictional character almost twice as often as a musician.8
The group also were more than 3 times more likely to think that a character was more likely to capture their attention than a musician.9 In fact, in every question we asked the surveyed group selected a fictional character over a musician. This includes ‘which of these will make you like a brand’, with a fictional character chosen 2.5x more often than a musician.10
In this match up, the character has easily won the battle over the celebrity.
Christmas advertisers have historically chosen to feature celebrities in their advertising significantly more than characters, so there aren’t a lot of other case studies to compare.
In 2017 M&S hired Paddington Bear to star in their ads, and it was the 2nd most watched Christmas ad on YouTube that year behind John Lewis.11 Meanwhile Barbour have consistently performed well at Christmas by partnering with characters including Shaun the Sheep, The Snowman and Paddington Bear.
As ad agencies start to work on their concepts for 2024, will they learn from ASDA’s experience and cast a fictional character in their campaign instead of a celebrity? Or will they try to see if they can turn the tide for celebrities? We’ll find out in November.
For a limited time only Born Licensing is offering a free 15-minute online session for agencies interested in learning more about how to leverage the magic of characters for Christmas. Email contact@bornlicensing.com to get your session booked in.
1: https://system1group.com/blog/top-12-uk-christmas-ads-of-2023
2: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7148665408718266368/
3. https://system1group.com/christmas-2022
4: https://www.marketingweek.com/asda-christmas-campaign-favourite-ads/
5. https://system1group.com/ad-of-the-week/asda-enlists-a-buddy-to-bring-christmas-nostalgia
6: https://system1group.com/blog/top-12-uk-christmas-ads-of-2023
7: https://www.cubery.com/learn/christmas-ad-testing
8: Ipsos MORI survey 27 November 2020 n=999 UK adults aged 16-75 who selected either a famous character from film, TV show, or animation, a celebrity, a famous musician or a sports star
9: Ipsos MORI survey 27 November 2020 n=851 UK adults aged 16-75 who selected either a famous character, a celebrity, a famous musician or a sports star
10: Ipsos MORI survey 27 November 2020 n=660 UK adults aged 16-75 who selected either a famous character, a celebrity, a famous musician or a sports star
11: https://www.marketingweek.com/youtube-top-10-christmas-ads-2017/
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