In Britain, the John Lewis Christmas ad is an event. The 2014 edition told a small story in two minutes: a boy named Sam and his best friend Monty, a penguin who bounces on trampolines and skids across the kitchen floor, but who quietly wants someone of his own. It was created by Adam&Eve/DDB and directed by Dougal Wilson.
The ending is the whole trick. On Christmas morning, Sam gives Monty the one gift he could not buy himself: a penguin girlfriend, waiting in a box under the tree. The soundtrack was Tom Odell’s cover of John Lennon’s “Real Love,” and it turned a department store ad into something people wanted to talk about.
The release was planned like a TV premiere. The film went live at 8am on YouTube and Facebook, then aired on Channel 4 during Gogglebox. It passed 2.5 million views in less than 12 hours.
The business results followed. John Lewis’s Christmas sales rose 5.5% year on year, in a market that grew 1.5%, and eBay reported a 300% jump in penguin toys across its site. Monty later got a children’s book of his own, and the ad set the bar for every emotional Christmas ad that came after it.
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