- Product/Brand - Sainsbury's
- Spot - Christmas In A Day (Dancing)
- Song Title - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
- Composer - Wood
- Publisher - Sony/ATV EMI Music
- Artist - Wizzard
- Record Company - Warner - PLG (Parlophone Label Group)
- Ad Agency - AMV BBDO
- Creative - Mike Durban, Tony Strong, Mike Hannett, Coin Jones. Phil Martin
- Film Company - RSA, Scott Free Productions
- Film Director - Kevin McDonald
- Post Production - LAB
- Air Date - December 1 2013
Warts and all? Well, not quite. But few TV ads have come closer to revealing the real highs and lows of Christmas in the UK than Sainsbury’s 2013 campaign. And that’s because it was made by real people filming themselves doing what they do the way they do it on the big day.
Some 114 families from all over the country submitted 360 hours of digital video shot on or around December 25 2012, for the supermarket’s Christmas In A Day offering. It took nearly 14 months from planning stage to a Bafta premiere on November 28 and steers us through a rollercoaster of heart-rending emotions – ranging from joy and wonder to the occasional moment of woe – which can make it one of the happiest or loneliest times of the year. It also captures in graphic and occasionally grainy detail some of the crazier ways that we Brits routinely celebrate Christmas in the 21st century.
The project was first conceived by Oscar-winning director Kevin MacDonald (of Touching The Void and King Of Scotland fame) while editing You Tube’s gargantuan Life In A Day project – in which over 4,500 hours of uploaded footage from 81,000 contributors from all around the world were boiled down into a 45 minute film commemorating July 24 2010.
Life In A Day subsequently won plaudits for the 46 year old director and producers Ridley Scott Associates and Scott Free London at the following year’s Sundance, Berlin and SXSW film festivals.
“It was completely unlike anything I had made before, and it really was an experiment in creating the opportunity to hear and see ordinary people share their lives, their loves and their fears,” says McDonald.
“And while we were working on it we talked about what it might be like if we chose a day that already had significance to people. And that had to be Christmas because it’s the one time in the whole year when ordinary British life is suspended. We have time to contemplate life and be with those we love.”
According to Mark Given, head of brand communications at Sainsbury's, Christmas In A Day was always conceived as a digital project and part of a marketing strategy which has seen a steady increase in the supermarket’s online presence and social media spend over the last five years. Any doubts about its suitability for terrestrial TV were scotched as soon as Sainsbury’s saw the rough cuts.
“We wanted to avoid creating a pastiche of Christmas,” Given continues. “It started out as an experiment which we hoped would reveal something interesting about the way we celebrate Christmas in this country. However we soon realised it had far exceeded our expectations. We believe this film is something very special indeed and I am proud that Sainsbury’s has been involved in this project from the outset.”
Apart from the final 50 minute cut, which can be seen here http://tinyurl.com/oh34rds , MacDonald was also tasked with creating a three and a half minute trailer and a further selection of 40 and 60 second executions for Sainsbury’s high profile TV campaign. It ran throughout December and went head to head with the season’s other adbreak blockbusters from high street rivals John Lewis, Tesco and Marks & Spencer.
But where its predecessor featured a soundtrack carefully constructed out of sounds found in the original footage by composer Harry Gregson-Williams and electronic music producer Matthew Herbert, Christmas In A Day clearly needed immediately recognizable holiday hits to retain its authenticity.
On the list of festive favourites which can be heard on the various spot edits were a handful of Glam and New Wave era standards - like Greg Lake’s I Believe In Father Christmas ( a 1975 Number Two), Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry ( Number Three in 1980) and Wizzard’s 1973 chart topper I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - as well as more traditional titles from Nat King Cole.
Together they contribute the musical backdrop to what Creative Review has already hailed as “Sainsbury’s brave but brilliant branding move” and one which forges new links between short and long form commercials that could have a marked effect on advertising industry orthodoxy going forward.
Watch this space.
