Christmas, Consumerism and the role of the Media

Christmas is the perfect time to sell many products through persuasion. It's the perfect time to construct your advertisements in a way that people will get emotionally attached too making them more likely to buy your products. It's the perfect time to create a soppy advert about family, happiness and coming together. Many companies create a story through their adverts to persuade people why they should buy from them, sometimes without even advertising a product, but if the advert is heart warming and sweet people will involuntarily go to that store and buy a product. These companies sure know how to make money.

John Lewis came out again this year with yet another cute advert featuring an innocent little boy Sam and his penguin Monty. John Lewis were very clever when it came too the two characters in their advert. A little boy and a penguin. We all know people can easily get emotionally attached to children and then they throw in a penguin, they really know how to catch people's attention. The penguin throughout the advert was looking at couples in the street so what did Sam get Monty? His own female penguin Mabel. Then Monty turned into a toy and at the end of the advert it says '#MontyThePenguin' and then it became obvious why they put this there because they are selling Monty the penguin and so many other products including a pillow, mugs, pyjamas and even a tie.

Watch the advert below:

Sainsbury's however took a different route. They focused on the war by creating the advert to highlight remembrance day earlier in the month. This advert was aimed more at adults rather than children because many children will not know much about the war. They made sure to show the loving side of the men fighting in the war. They took the story of all the men coming out to play football at Christmas to show the love and togetherness they had. I did think this advert was really good because even though i am not an adult I know about the horrors of the war so it was nice to be able to see the innocence of the soldiers, both British and German. Two men one British and one German gave each other a secret gift. A chocolate bar and a biscuit. Although about war Sainsbury's managed to make it a friendly advert and I was moved. It wouldn't however be a surprise if they started selling the chocolate and the biscuit.



Boots was the last Christmas advert we looked at. Boots took the route of being there for family at Christmas, showing them you care. The boots advert featured many different people all travelling somewhere, we later realise they are all travelling to the same house to surprise someone on a very early Boxing day morning because she's always working late. I think their advert was very realistic and some people can relate. They even managed to get their store into the heart-warming story of a family coming together and even showing off one the products they are selling. They really highlighted the generosity as a young girl came from the airport to come and see who was presumably her mum. But they were also trying to get us attached to the advert by showing the mum and her generosity staying for hours at the hospital to help the patients. Merry Christmas mum was the only thing that was spoken persuading us to buy form their store for our mum's.