Twenty years after John Lewis turned its Christmas advertising into a national event, its latest festive film has divided opinion. As the retailer faces heightened expectations and growing scrutiny, has its greatest marketing achievement also become its biggest challenge?
For John Lewis, its annual Christmas advert has become something considerably more complicated than just a showing of its festive wares. After 20 years of matching moving or joyous visuals with exclusive tracks from hitmakers, appearances from celebrities and a liberal dollop of glitter, it’s tranformed into an cultural event, a national talking point and an almost impossible act to follow.
With this almost unmatched level of cultural kudos comes extraordinary pressure. Every November, the John Lewis is competing not only with other brands for attention, but competing with 19 previous versions of itself, and with the memories, nostalgia and emotional expectations those adverts have created.
The arrival of this year’s offering, Gloria and Pickles, suggests that living up to that legacy is becoming increasingly difficult.
The weight of 20 Christmases
When John Lewis released Shadows in 2007, few could have anticipated the festive advertising phenomenon that would follow.
Campaigns such as The Long Wait in 2011, The Bear and the Hare in 2013 and Monty the Penguin in 2014 helped transform the John Lewis’ Christmas marketing into something resembling appointment viewing.
John Lewis firmly established an emotional connection that transcended the products it was selling. They also changed the industry’s expectations of what a retailer’s Christmas campaign could achieve.
Today, a John Lewis Christmas advert arrives accompanied by intense media coverage, professional critiques, social media commentary and inevitable comparisons with the classics.
For the creative teams responsible, that presents a remarkable challenge. How do you preserve everything that made the formula successful without appearing predictable? And how do you introduce something new without abandoning what audiences have come to love?
A deliberate change of direction
For its milestone year, John Lewis has attempted to strike precisely that balance.
Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, Gloria and Pickles stars Dame Kristin Scott Thomas as a glamorous grandmother struggling to choose meaningful Christmas presents for her grandchildren.
With help from Pickles, a childhood toy dog voiced by Paul Whitehouse, she embarks on a magical shopping adventure, eventually creating a spectacular disco-inspired ‘gran cave’ for the family to enjoy together.
The three-minute film features Sam Fender covering The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want, accompanied by children from his former school and the Easington Colliery Band.
The familiar ingredients are present, but the tone is noticeably different.
Writing on LinkedIn, Rosie Hanley, marketing and loyalty director at John Lewis, explained that the team had deliberately retained its established storytelling formula while introducing more ‘humour, fun and joy’.
Hanley, who has now overseen six John Lewis Christmas campaigns, described creating the advert as a year-round endeavour.
The creative idea was rooted in a consumer insight. Fifty two per cent of grandparents say they give cash because they lack confidence in choosing the right presents.
The campaign’s message, ‘Don’t give up on giving’, encourages consumers to rediscover the pleasure of choosing something thoughtful. It’s a recognisable human dilemma, delivered through the kind of lavish production John Lewis has made its signature.
According to The Guardian, John Lewis increased its spending on this year’s production, reflecting rising costs and the desire to make its 20th campaign particularly special.
The financial investment is inevitably a huge cost, but so is the reputational gamble.
The reviews are in, and they’re far from unanimous
Despite the considerable ambition behind the campaign, the initial response has been sharply divided.
Research from William Hill Vegas, conducted using media intelligence platform Meltwater, paints a particularly challenging picture of the online reaction. The analysis examined more than 34,000 online posts following the advert’s release on 3 November.
Of those, 50 per cent were classified as negative, compared with just 19.7 per centpositive and 30.3 per cent neutral.
Negative commentary therefore outnumbered positive reactions by more than two to one.
Some of the criticism has focused on the portrayal of Gloria’s grandchildren, whom viewers have accused of appearing ‘spoiled and ungrateful’. Others have questioned the advert’s depiction of an affluent family enjoying an extravagant Christmas at a time when many British households are struggling with the cost of living.
The Independent reported criticism of the advert’s luxurious setting, with some commentators arguing that it feels disconnected from the financial pressures facing ordinary families.
Advertising analysts have also offered qualified praise. Kantar highlighted the humour, soundtrack and Scott Thomas’s performance, while suggesting that the film lacked the emotional impact of previous John Lewis campaigns.
Yet the response is not universally negative.
A separate OnePulse survey of 500 UK adults on launch day found that 68 per cent liked or loved the advert, giving it an average rating of 3.8 out of five.
Among respondents who had seen other festive campaigns, 53n per cent considered John Lewis’s offering the best of 2026 so far.
It’s important to note, sentiment analysis measures the tone of public posts, not necessarily the opinions of the wider viewing population. Equally, a single survey of 500 people cannot determine the campaign’s ultimate effectiveness.
What the early evidence does suggest, however, is that the advert has generated substantial attention, without achieving universal affection.
And perhaps that’s the fundamental challenge facing John Lewis.
Has John Lewis become a victim of its own success?
There’s an argument that John Lewis has established a standard of Christmas advertising that audiences now expect it to surpass every single year.
Consumers don’t just want an entertaining film, they want something that makes them laugh, cry, remember their childhood, reconnect with loved ones and feel the magic of Christmas.
Preferably in three minutes or less, between segments of the Great British Bake Off.
Even an objectively well-produced advert can feel disappointing when measured against the emotional impact of something people first watched more than a decade ago.
Nostalgia is a particularly difficult competitor because John Lewis isn’t just being judged against the quality of its earlier campaigns, but against how people remember feeling when they first saw them.
The decision to make Gloria and Pickles more playful is therefore understandable. After years of emotionally charged storytelling, a lighter approach offers the brand an opportunity to evolve.
But that evolution also creates a certain tension. For some viewers, the absence of the familiar tear-jerking finale may feel refreshing. For others, it may seem that something essential is missing.
There’s also a commercial dilemma beneath the creative one.
John Lewis ultimately needs its Christmas advertising to sell products, encourage store visits and strengthen the brand during retail’s most important trading period.
Its most celebrated campaigns often succeeded by making audiences temporarily forget they were watching an advert. Yet the 2026 campaign places the act of shopping, and John Lewis itself, much closer to the centre of the story.
That might make sound commercial sense. Whether it delivers the same emotional connection is another question.
The ultimate Christmas marketing paradox
Twenty years on, few British retailers can claim to have built anything approaching the cultural significance of the John Lewis Christmas advert.
The fact that a three-minute commercial featuring a talking wooden dog can generate national headlines, thousands of online conversations and extensive industry debate is itself evidence of the brand’s extraordinary position.
But attention and affection aren’t interchangeable, and neither automatically translates into commercial success.
It’s still early. The advert has only just launched, and its longer-term effectiveness will be judged through brand perception, engagement and, ultimately, Christmas trading performance.
What’s already clear is that John Lewis faces a challenge largely of its own making. By consistently raising the bar, it has conditioned consumers to expect not simply a good Christmas advert, but an exceptional one.
And after 20 years, that may be the hardest standard of all to maintain.
Perhaps the real question whether, having spent two decades creating an advertising phenomenon, John Lewis will ever be allowed to produce one that is simply good enough.
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