A 130-year history of Christmas marketing, told through five ads

The advent of the John Lewis Christmas ad always heralds that Christmas is here, followed as it is by a heavenly host of other brands, all vying for Oscars in production values and a fruity slice of Christmas market share.

As much of a festive fix as carols and mince pies though the John Lewis advert seems, this annual extravaganza only began in 2007. Before this lies a zesty heritage of Christmas advertising that reveals both how much and how little the country has changed in the last century.

Nostalgia, emotion, storytelling: Is this the ‘most consistent’ year yet for Christmas ads?Christmas, though supposed to be the creation of Christ and the Apostles, is actually rather later in origin. Victorian, in fact. Much that we associate with the nativity stems from Charles Dickens’s 1843 novel A Christmas Carol, the invention of Christmas cards in the same year, and the popularisation of the Christmas tree by Prince Albert in 1848. The formalisation of 25 December as a bank holiday in 1871, and the evolution of St Nicholas into a nocturnal bringer of gifts, ideally teamed with reindeer, fleshed out the story that endures today.

This was all too tempting for our nation of shopkeepers. They saw a celebration of the winter solstice (that actually long predated Christ) as an unmissable opportunity to shift stock. Enter advertising, which was then in its infancy following the late Victorian explosion of literacy and national newspapers.

1890s: Newball & Mason

Copyright: History of Advertising Trust https://www.hatads.org.uk/

Newball & Mason were chemists who epitomised the enterprise of Victorian England. This beautifully crafted ad for (non-intoxicating) wine essences shows the commercial art of the time at its best – the typeface, the biblical echoes of the headline, the delicacy of the baskets, the perfect product placement on Father Christmas’s bosom.

For an advert of circa 1890 that predated any advertising regulation it is, in fact, remarkably restrained in its claims. When the Advertising Association was formed in 1926, one of its major objectives was to bolster trust in advertising by weeding out ads which promised – for example – to cure cancer, or provide a 500% return on investment, as people were becoming wise to the fact that liberal use of artistic licence was sometimes getting in the way of the truth in advertising.

1940s: British Railways

Fast forward 50 years and the world was turned upside down. The country was at war with Hitler’s Germany. This was the age that historians call ‘total war’. No longer could conflict be left to professional armed services fighting overseas as was so often the case in Napoleonic times – Nelson at Trafalgar and Wellington at Waterloo, for example.

By 1941, most of Britain’s resources – human, industrial and economic – were being used to fight the war. The needs of the RAF, Army and Royal Navy came before those of civilians. Management of the ‘Big Four’ private railway companies – London Midland  and Scottish, London and North Eastern, Southern, and Great Western – had been granted to the Railway Executive Committee to serve the needs of the war.

Copyright: History of Advertising Trust https://www.hatads.org.uk/

Government advertising, run under the auspices of the Ministry of Information, pirouetted from promoting the virtues of railway travel to urging citizens not to travel at all. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ was a slogan that long outlived the war. It was echoed by tactical advertising over Christmas that asked the public to ‘Keep the lines clear for weapons, munitions and men’. It went even further in its headline, urging the public to cut down on sending Christmas presents.

The steel combat helmet dressed with holly says clearly enough that it is a wartime Christmas, the unadorned style as functional and to-the-point as the times demanded. Almost as an afterthought, readers are exhorted: ‘Please don’t smoke in non-smoking compartments’. It is a reminder both of the prevalence of smoking at the time (around 80% of men and 40% of women smoked) and the very beginnings of concerns about tobacco. No prizes here for artistic ambition, but a sure enough sign of those grim times of 80 years ago.

1950s and 1960s: Esso

Number three on our carol sheet takes us into the swinging ’60s. Esso’s campaign urging motorists to ‘Put a Tiger in your tank’ was first used from 1953. Petrol rationing, introduced in 1940, had still been in place until 1948, restricting motorists to 90 miles a month. Finally relaxed in 1950, the field was open for an advertising war between oil companies like Castrol, BP, Shell and Esso, which had effectively branded a commodity.

Copyright: History of Advertising Trust https://www.hatads.org.uk/

Motoring was the transport sensation of the ’50s, with the number of cars on British roads tripling in 10 years, and Esso’s campaign encouraged motorists to break the shackles of rationing by getting out and relishing the joys of the open road. The key message was that Esso was less a fuel than an invitation to adventure. The campaign was perfected in the US in the ’60s, with a cuddlier tiger and an upbeat jingle, to become one of the most successful of its time.

This Christmas execution is jaunty and confident, the tiger cheerily slipping into Santa’s costume in a clever conjunction of symbols. The copy suggests that Santa is putting tigers in tanks by way of gifts. In a nod to times becoming more conscious of road safety, it wishes readers, ‘Happy, safe Christmas motoring’.

1990s: Silk Cut

Copyright: History of Advertising Trust https://www.hatads.org.uk/

Come 1995, smoking had been reduced to around 28% of men and 26% of women.

Cigarette advertisers and their agencies were increasingly constrained by tobacco legislation. They demonstrated huge imagination in tackling the restriction.

The best of the campaigns was Saatchi’s wittily allusive and constantly inventive work for Silk Cut. This Christmas ad, credited to the late, great Paul Arden, is still recognisably within the Newball & Mason tradition.

It both plunders and reinvents the creative commons of advent imagery.

2000s: National Missing Persons Helpline

Finally, from 2004, a sober and all too timely reminder that for many – year in, year out – Christmas is for some a time not of joy, but of sorrow.

Copyright: History of Advertising Trust

With art direction fittingly pedestrian, this is a brilliant inversion of a very old riff.

If there is nothing really new in Christmas advertising, little new in sentiment, imagery – and motivation – there is everything new in what each year’s ads tell us about ourselves.

That is why the best old Christmas ads still bear gifts, enabling us to feel a nostalgic moment and travel back to times long since past.

With special thanks to Alistair Moir at the History of Advertising Trust.



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2024-12-13 13:22:00

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