// John Lewis launches Christmas ad a week earlier than usual
// The ad features another unusual character – sticking to its usual theme
John Lewis has introduced this year’s Christmas ad, featuring an alien stepping in where a dragon, penguin and monster under the bed have gone before.
The company has become a big annual TV moment that kicks off the Christmas shopping season.
This year, it has launched its ad a week earlier than usual after a rise in searches for Christmas products on the department store’s websites.
READ MORE: John Lewis Partnership signs £420m credit deal linked to sustainability
This is to help shoppers try to dodge supply problems in the run-up to the festive period.
Its campaigns – from the Hare and the Bear in 2013 to Monty the Penguin in 2014 and 2019’s Excitable Edgar the dragon – generally call on characters that draw millions of viewers online.
After last year’s effort, which featured a montage of quirky animations about kindness and giving to charity, rather than giving presents, this year’s festive promo features more products.
Click here to sign up to Retail Gazette’s free daily email newsletter
A very difficult management decision, with store closures, redundancies, and stock supply issues, do you plough ahead with something like £6m of expense on a Christmas TV campaign? Have they read the mood of the nation correctly? Could that expenditure have
been better directed at a local level? At a time when we have food poverty and people sleeping on our streets, do we have to have a TV campaign just because we always do one?