For Provence, the most interesting creative decision in this year’s Morrisons Christmas advert is giving Dad a reason to ask for help.
That’s the premise of the Christmas advert Morrisons launched on 9 November. Baby Bear has grown up and is bringing his girlfriend home to meet his parents. Mum is getting the house ready. Dad heads to the supermarket, where a fishmonger talks him through how to cook an enormous salmon.
The bears will probably get most of the attention. From an agency perspective, we’d make the case for the fishmonger. His few seconds on screen answer a question that can get uncomfortable quite late in the creative process. Why does this particular brand get to tell this particular story?
The choice of Goldilocks does some clever work upfront. Generations of children know exactly how she takes her porridge. Make her the guest at a family Christmas and the audience immediately understands the pressure her hosts feel. There’s also something familiar about Dad’s response to that pressure. He’s bought a fish big enough to impress everyone and has reached the part of the plan where he needs to know what to do with it.
That’s where the writing pays off for Morrisons. A shot of the salmon on the table would have shown us what the supermarket sells. Letting us hear the advice at the counter shows us why Dad went there. Morrisons has somewhere real to set that exchange. At its Market Street counters, customers can speak to the people preparing their food about cuts, portions and cooking. The advert takes an ordinary part of the shopping experience and gives it a consequence we care about. We want this lunch to go well for him. www.morrisons-corporate.com
We think the campaign is on less distinctive ground once everyone sits down to dinner. The crooked tree, the mismatched place settings and the guest who appreciates the effort are a warm resolution. Several retailers could plausibly sign that scene. The exchange at the fish counter is the one we’d protect in the edit, precisely because it would be so easy to cut. Lose it and the plot still makes sense. What gets harder to explain is why we’ve just watched a Morrisons advert.
It makes us wonder what a Christmas brief would look like if an agency spent a Saturday morning at that counter before writing it. How much salmon feeds six if two guests insist they’ll “only have a little”? Can you prepare it the night before? How do you know when the middle is done? Those questions tell you who’s coming over, what the host is worried about and where the retailer can help.
The creative choice we admire is letting Dad ask. And it leaves Morrisons with a promise a customer can test long after Christmas. Walk up to the counter in January, admit you’ve never cooked this fish before, and see what happens next.
