M&S Christmas TV Adverts
The 2023 M&S Christmas advert is finally here! We take a look at the recently launched 2023 Christmas advert and some of the most recent Marks and Spencer television adverts, including storylines, their successes, and star-studded casts!
2023 M&S Christmas Advert
The M&S Christmas Advert for 2023 is a star-studded event showing different celebrities including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Tan France and Hannah Waddingham seemingly overwhelmed with all the Christmas decorating and festivities seemingly needed to celebrate the holidays properly.
2022 M&S Christmas Advert
The 2022 M&S Christmas advert sees the return of a previous Character, Dawn French as the fairy. Upon waking up on top of a Christmas tree, she looks for a friend to wake up and join her. She finds a duck toy in the dog bed which she brings to life with magic! This duck is voiced by Dawn French’s on screen partner, Jennifer Saunders. The duck toy is feeling deflated, literally, as her stuffing is falling out from being overplayed with by the dog! The fairy character then introduces the M&S christmas food and drink range to fill the Duck toy with festive cheer.
2021 M&S Christmas Adverts
Similar to Very, John Lewis and Aldi, it has become expected for M&S to produce a brand new creative Christmas TV advert to our screens every year. In 2021, M&S has launched two Christmas adverts, one focused on their food selection, and the other on clothing.
M&S 2021 Christmas Food Advert and Cast
With a focus on food, the 2021 M&S Christmas food advert features a fairy who wakes up after the store is closed, and accidentally drops her magic wand on some Percy pig decorated wrapping paper, bringing Percy pig to life! The fairy then proceeds to guide Percy pig around the store, showing him the different festive foods on offer.
This advert features a star-studded cast, including Dawn French who voices the fairy, and Tom Holland voicing the animated version of Percy Pig.
In a survey conducted by Attest, M&S’s food Christmas advert was enough to put them in the top spot for the Christmas advert most likely to make a user buy their Christmas range.
M&S Christmas Clothing Advert 2021
Staring actress Madisyn Ritland, this advert features an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ style approach whereby a woman escapes the dreaded busy high street to a magical Christmas world where she’s able to simply enjoy Christmas with her family (of course featuring many of the clothes M&S has to offer).
Whilst the advert is fun, engaging and of course festive, the whole premise of escaping the high street to enjoy M&S’s range might not necessarily help our UK-wide desire to revamp the decaying high streets. Nor does it help M&S to keep its branches open. Instead of jumping into a puddle, perhaps just walking into an M&S store should have been enough to illustrate the escape into M&S’s festive wonderland.
2020 M&S Christmas TV Adverts
The M&S Christmas TV adverts in 2020 took a more traditional expected approach. Voiced by Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy, these adverts simply go through some of the festive food and drink they have available. This includes a light-up gin liquor with edible gold flakes (tried, tested and approved!), mini beef and porcini Yorkshire puddings, and a triple chocolate Panettone. The advert music for this 2020 M&S Christmas advert is Albatross by Fleetwood Mac, this music has featured on many of M&S’s food adverts over the years.
Humourous and features famous Actor Tom Hardy as the narrator. The M&S Christmas food advert for 2020 is all about sprouts and making them seem as appealing as possible. Considering there’s a lot of dividing opinion on whether sprouts are tasty or an unwelcome part of the Christmas roast, centring an entire advert around them creates a perfect talking point in homes worldwide. Very clever.
M&S Christmas Adverts 2019
Before the pandemic gave Christmas celebrations a shakeup, M&S was still purely focused on repositioning itself, after a long period of being scrutinised for being for just the over 55s. Their 2019 Christmas clothing advert, features a range of different people, mainly young adults, dancing in their Christmas jumpers to the song “Jump Around” – by House of Pain. A similar advert was also done to showcase their range of pyjamas. Whilst the advert does show that M&S can have clothing suitable for younger consumers, perhaps it’s not necessarily encouraging the same consumer to then go in and shop at their stores. If anything, they might be just showing that 55+ audience that they can buy their younger relatives jumpers and pyjamas!
The M&S Christmas food advert for 2019 look a slightly different approach to usual. In a Christmas Market scene where all the food comes from M&S, Paddy McGuinness and Emma Willis have a look around the different foods sampling as they go. While it seems unusual that Emma and Paddy are introducing every food type at the stalls with “this is an M&S [insert food name here]”, visiting the Christmas markets is something that a lot of Brits can relate to, providing an almost guaranteed hit with television audiences.
M&S Christmas Adverts 2018
In 2018 the M&S Christmas clothing and gifts advert featured daytime television celebrity Holly Willoughby, who is shown plugging in the lights to her Christmas tree, as she proceeds to explain all the must-haves of Christmas, including some humorous, relatable and wholesome traditions of Christmas. This advert features a diverse range of products, that is likely to appeal to a wide audience, despite predominantly targeting a female audience.
The M&S Christmas food advert for 2018 has the premise of their representatives travelling across the country to find out what the UK’s favourite M&S Christmas favourite is. Whilst there is an attempt to showcase genuine reviews and public opinion here, there is a discussion on the youtube comments of this video that the people featured are a mixture of actors and existing M&S staff… sneaky, but to be expected for television advertising.
M&S Christmas Adverts 2017
In M&S’s 2017 Christmas advert, we meet the much-loved Paddington bear. He unknowingly catches a burglar (played by Mark Benton) stealing the street’s Christmas presents, and mistakes him for Father Christmas. In his innocence, Paddington believes he’s helping the burglar by putting the presents back under the trees of his neighbours. When the burglar sees the joy of families opening their presents, and receives a signature marmalade sandwich from Padington’s hat, he sees the error of his ways and he thanks Paddington for his help. This is one of the most enjoyable M&S Christmas adverts, however, we are a little distracted by the story to pay attention to any M&S products that feature.
The M&S food Christmas advert for 2017 is a more basic set-up, focusing on the food and little else, the advertisement shows a range of Christmas feasts and deserts with Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” playing in the background. Whilst lacking in creativity compared to their Paddington alternative, this advert perfectly does the job of showcasing their food range, and incentivising viewers to buy their Christmas selection.
M&S Christmas Adverts 2016
The 2016 Christmas M&S advert takes on a slightly different take on the Father Christmas traditions. In this story, Mrs Claus receives a last-minute letter from a boy who wants to give a pair of shoes to his sister after the family dog accidentally tore them apart! With Father Christmas already on his way to deliver presents, Mrs Claus gets ready in a glamorous undercover spy style and travels by helicopter to make sure the present is under the tree before Christmas day morning. Similarly to the Paddington Bear-themed Christmas advert in 2017, it’s difficult to see the actual M&S product range available, but one to raise brand awareness.
A more traditional style M&S food advert, their 2016 Christmas version features backing music from Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be”. Simple and effective, we’re shown some of M&S’s Christmas food range in an animated fashion surrounded by all things glittery and gold. Considering 2017’s advert is visibly similar, we can only assume this style of advertising has proven very successful for M&S.
Which is your favourite M&S Christmas advert? Let us know in the comments!