"Where Love Lives"

4 November 2025

2 mins

Afterson.

Mmm num ba de
Dum bum ba be
Doo buh dum ba beh beh
Under pressure!

'Under pressure' sums it up. The weight sitting on the shoulders of Franki Goodwin and her colleagues at Saatchi & Saatchi as they prepare to unleash the John Lewis Christmas ad on an expectant world cannot be relieved by Ozempic™. Not only are they adding to a canon of work which continues to represent an idea of what advertising can do, they are doing so in the unfortunate context of a retailer which is struggling with flat sales and modest profitability. Doo buh dum ba beh beh, indeed.

The underlying idea of this year's ad is reconnection. The framing is a classic study of misfiring communication between a father and son, although the ad wisely eschews the usual way of establishing this idea which is to show scenes of escalating disenchantment. Instead, it credits the audience with the ability to grasp that there is an untold background story. It concentrates on the reconnection itself.

The inspiration may or may not be a scene towards the end of Charlotte Wells's 'Aftersun' which features a similarly fantastical moment of connection on the dance floor. It looks like it might, and whether the similarity is by design or coincidental, it possesses a similar energy.

The resulting reconnection leads to the most powerful moment in the whole ad, which, very unusually, comes in the form of a super: "If you can't find the words, find the gift", and you realise the whole ad has been built around this very simple and rather beautiful idea.

UK

Department Stores