An Investigation Into Weird Christmas Marketing Techniques

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Writers’ Club member Emily looks at baubles and the plain bizarre…

Today I am putting on my detective hat, and attempting to solve the mystery of how Christmas marketing got so bizarre. Over the past few years, the odd quirky decoration has been known to pop up, but this year, I think there was something in the air at multiple company HQs across the country. Never have I seen such a vast quantity of inexplicably un-Christmassy decorations both in store and online. Then it got to Christmas advert season, and things stepped up a notch. Hold onto your hats comrades as we boldly investigate the weirdest realms of Christmas marketing in a desperate bid to find out where it all went wrong. 

We begin with a festive staple: the Christmas tree bauble. When I think bauble, I think traditional round shape, shiny reds, golds, silvers and blues. Or, at a push, maybe a snowman, reindeer, Santa or similar. I understand wanting to spice your decorations up. I am not against a bauble revolution. But there is a fine line between something that’s quirky and something that’s just…weird. It has become a tradition that my family and I look through the John Lewis Christmas display every year. Owing to the most random collection of household objects known to man being strung up and left to dangle forlornly, it was a very surreal experience this time round. Here are the highlights…

A Christmas hammer, perhaps for beating out your frustrations at losing the family board game. 

A Christmas carrot, which could be a vague attempt to profit from Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot, if you squint. 

A Christmas broccoli…which is just a broccoli. 

A pink Christmas VW Campervan, for when you have the urge to escape to a 1960s commune because the capitalist corruption of the festive period is distressing you. 

And, finally, what says Christmas more emphatically than a tin of sardines?

But the bauble chaos did not stop with John Lewis. Shout out to Typo’s assorted ornament collection featuring a rainbow roller-skate, the MTV logo and a dreadfully posed cat, but hey, at least it had a Christmas hat on! Honourable mention also goes to Paperchase because nothing screams Christmas like a sausage roll with the word vegan scrawled across it. Or, you could go one step further, with Paperchase’s Dairylea bauble. At that point, why not save yourself eight quid and balance an old Dairylea box on your tree? Both would look equally stupid. 

Hoping this was a fluke, I eagerly awaited the Christmas adverts on TV. Once upon a time, adverts promoted a product to you, by showing you how great they were. Adverts also made sure you knew exactly who was doing the advertising, and each detail was meticulously thought out. I would be lying to you if I said that was still the case. Take the random medieval festive arrangement of Teenage Dirtbag playing in the Sainsbury’s advert for no reason I can possibly think of. 

Or, try the zombie-duck who features in the M&S advert, presumably to terrify you into food-buying submission. 

They have nothing to do with Christmas that I can think of, and a very tenuous connection to the brands they represent. Even the iconic John Lewis advert this year, though very heartwarming, doesn’t exactly sell John Lewis to you as a customer. 

All this left me feeling vaguely bemused. Had I just not “got” Christmas this year? But speaking to family and friends, I wasn’t the only one. So it got me thinking…why are things getting so strange?

As is so often the case, I think the answer lies with today’s consumerist society. There are so many brands, adverts, icons, all competing for our attention. Every one of them is trying to stand out, and coming up with more and more outlandish ways to be unique. Instead of relying on traditional images, they’re thinking outside the box. But with every year of boxless thinking they stray further and further from what people are looking for. The previous year’s quirky commentary becomes the new box. It has gotten to the point where I think they’ve forgotten why the box even exists. Why bother trying to reinvent the classics? Nobody (that I know of) is thinking I hate this whole Christmas cosiness thing. I’m sick of normal baubles. What I want is a Christmas espresso maker to hang on my tree. (Another interesting choice by John Lewis.) I already know what Christmas means to me: togetherness, compassion, sharing. I don’t want to watch the elaborately edited pilgrimage of a robin to learn this, I want to know who has the best deals on Christmas food.

So I end my investigation with this realisation, but not without hope. Perhaps the brands will realise nobody wants Christmas sardines. Perhaps they will stop forcing quirky pick-me adverts down our throats. Perhaps, if we refuse to purchase their weird inventions, they’ll stop trying to bludgeon us over the head with them. Perhaps Christmas will become less about high stakes stress-shopping, and more about enjoying the season. 

Or perhaps I should just suck it up and embrace the Christmas Dairylea…