Christmas 2024: Betting on the House

Image credit: Debby Hudson via Unsplash

One of the most interesting trends in 2024’s Christmas ads is something the viewing public are completely unaware of. In the past it’s been relatively rare to find a brand doing their Christmas ad in-house rather than making it with an agency team. 

The do-it-yourself route was the province of small or local brands rather than the big players, contributing to a general industry suspicion of in-house work. It could sometimes feel like snobbery, but it was also often justified, with in-house ads getting a reputation for being more promotional and less emotional and creative than traditional agency work.

But in the 2020s that’s all changed. This year we’ve seen some of the big UK retail names, like Argos and M&S, take their Christmas ads in-house. We’ve seen global brands like LEGO and Amazon who’ve stepped back from agency work. And several of these in-house Christmas ads are outperforming the competition when the public give their verdict on System1’s Test Your Ad platform.

A brand that’s led the trend towards in-house Christmas work is Amazon. The transformation of their Amazon Prime brand to include streaming service Prime Video put them into the business of storytelling as well as retail, and they’ve used their in-house capabilities to make story-driven holiday ads which work on their global stage. As a worldwide brand, Amazon need to find ideas which are truly cross-cultural and don’t rely on English-language dialogue. This year’s “Midnight Opus”, a heart-warming tale of a man who finds his singing voice thanks to his co-workers and an Amazon-bought tuxedo, landed the maximum 5.9-Stars on Test Your Ad, the latest in a string of 5-Star Christmas efforts.

“‘Midnight Opus’ is a story that celebrates the joy from doing something special for the people in your life. We all know how wonderful it feels to be the recipient of even the smallest act of kindness—whether that be a thoughtful gift or an encouraging word—and we wanted to bring that ineffable emotion to life”, said Jo Shoesmith, global chief creative officer, Amazon.

Like Amazon, LEGO have used in-house capabilities to produce a global holiday campaign, one that creates a new character who’s an incarnation of their brand values of play and fun. “Cataclaws”, the LEGO version of Santa, is a LEGO-built cat who arrives down the chimney on a tide of bricks and spreads happiness by encouraging young and old alike to be more playful. The ad follows its model moggy across the globe before Cataclaws comes home to its original family. “Cataclaws” hits a strong 4.3-Stars for long-term effectiveness and gets Exceptional ratings on both short-term Spike Rating and on Brand Fluency (speed and accuracy of recognition).

LEGO and Amazon are using their ads to debut new characters but back in the UK we see retailers making ads in-house which use recurring character Fluent Devices. Argos brings back its animated kid Connie, in an ad with her toy dinosaur Trevor where Trevor dreams of being a rock star. And M&S has its Fairy character for a fourth year running, voiced by Dawn French and this year meeting Dawn French herself. Both ads were huge successes with audiences, with Argos hitting 4-Stars and M&S’ Fairy commercial getting the maximum 5.9-Star Rating as well as an Exceptional short-term Spike.

These aren’t isolated successes. Analysis of the Test Your Ad database for 2024’s Christmas ads shows that the ads we’ve identified as being the work of in-house teams score an average of 4.9-Stars with Exceptional Spike and strong Brand Fluency. That’s in comparison to the overall Christmas 2024 average of 4.1-Stars.

So if you’re thinking of in-house as the cheap or low-quality option, your thinking needs to change. In 2024 in-house work performed above the already very high Christmas average.

What accounts for this renaissance in in-house Christmas work? The secret may be creative consistency. As our Compound Creativity report shows, lasting agency-brand relationships and commitment to creative ideas are a foundation of brand and business effects in the long term. But Christmas ads have often existed in a state of constant change, with new creative ideas demanded each year as well as regular switches of agency. Partnerships and lasting ideas like Aldi and McCann, which brought us the wildly successful Kevin The Carrot ads, are sadly rare.

Keeping Christmas work in house can boost creative consistency. An in-house ad is likely to be closely aligned to the brand idea and values - like the LEGO work this year. Commitment to in-house production lets a brand build expertise and experience over time, like Amazon’s team have. And a brand can be a custodian of recurring Fluent Devices and creative ideas, like M&S’ Fairy and Argos’ Connie. Consistency isn’t just a Christmas virtue, and in-house production lets a brand apply its ideas, values and distinctive assets all year round, so its seasonal ads don’t have to carry the brand-building burden alone.

For one more example of how well in-house production can work, let’s look at Sky’s 2024 Christmas ad, a piece of delightful storytelling in which a girl finds the words to ask a boy out using Sky’s library of Christmas classics like Elf. It’s an in-house ad which is absolutely up to agency standard, with an original idea and clever use of the huge catalogue of Christmas assets Sky has access to. And the public agree - Sky gets another 5.9-Star Rating, the maximum possible, with Exceptional Spike Rating and Brand Fluency scores giving it the “triple whammy” of Test Your Ad Top Rankings. It’s one of the most successful media company ads we’ve ever tested, and work any brand would be proud of.

So is the agency model of Christmas ads in trouble? Not necessarily. Most big retailers aren’t making in-house ads at Christmas. And the top-scoring Christmas ads of recent years, like Kevin The Carrot, are from brands and agencies who value consistency directly. But the exceptional performance of in-house work in 2024 should put the practice firmly on a brand’s Christmas nice list.