Waitrose overtakes John Lewis as public’s favourite Christmas ad, study finds
McDonald’s and Asda both using The Grinch has led to ad misattribution, according to Ipsos data.
Waitrose’s star-studded ‘The Perfect Gift’ is building strong momentum and has stolen the top spot from John Lewis for the public’s most favourite ad this week, according to exclusive Ipsos Race to Christmas data.
When asked to spontaneously recall their favourite Christmas ad, 16% of people said Waitrose, a 2% jump from last week, followed by 14% saying John Lewis and 8% favouring Aldi’s ‘Kevin the Carrot’ effort, which saw the brand asset return for a 10th year.
For the past three weeks, John Lewis’ ‘Where Love Lives’ had the top spot, with 20% of respondents recalling the retailer in this context last week.
Waitrose also comes in at the top for ad recognition. When showing respondents de-branded stills of the ad, 54% recognised Waitrose’s ‘The Perfect Gift’, a 6% increase from last week.
This is followed by Asda’s ‘A Very Merry Grinchmas’ in second place with 53%, an 8% jump from last week, and Sainsbury’s ‘The Unexpected Guest’ in third place with 50%, a 2% decline from last week.
New entrant McDonald’s also gained a respectable 37% on recognition with its ‘The Grinch Sabotages McDonald’s’ ad.
This is a big change from last week, which saw part two of Aldi’s Kevin trilogy take the top spot with 55%. This week, part 3 of Aldi’s trilogy, showing Kevin and Katie’s wedding, came in fourth with 49%.
EE also saw a slight uptick, coming in at 16% compared to 9% last week. Disney and Google Pixel scored the lowest, with 8% and 9% recognition respectively.
Now that Aldi’s last ad is out and Tesco’s episodic chapters are fully in play, Samira Brophy, senior creative excellence director at Ipsos, says the team will be looking at what style of episodic storytelling and how many chapters works the best.
“Early results and looking back to 2024 seems to favour serialised and two-part stories given the length of the advertising window, but we have two more weeks of race data to help inform this,” says Brophy.
Asda came in first for the number of respondents who recognise an ad and correctly link it to the brand, with a score of 37% – a 10% increase from last week. This is followed by Aldi’s part three at 36%.
Last week, part two of the Aldi trilogy topped the charts with 43%. Ipsos says Aldi must “build up media momentum to get the final part of the trilogy cemented in the minds of consumers”.
Coca-Cola and M&S come in joint third with a score of 35%, with both scoring 28% and 29% respectively last week.
Both McDonald’s and Asda brought The Grinch to life in their Christmas ads this year. This week’s data shows that 55% of respondents misattributed McDonald’s’ ‘The Grinch Sabotages McDonald’s’ ad to Asda – inferring that brands should think about exclusivity while leaning into the use of brand characters.
Brophy says Asda going earlier may have given them the advantage, but the team will be watching to see if “the retail and menu might of McDonald’s will equalise them in the coming weeks that matter the most”.
Burberry has scored the highest for ad empathy for the past two weeks, determined by the number of recognisers that strongly agree the Christmas advert is for ‘people like me’. However, this week Coca-Cola’s ‘Holidays are Coming’ comes in first with a score of 45% – despite this being a 2% decrease in its score from last week, where it came seventh.
It also scored the highest in terms of recognisers agreeing that the advert ‘made me feel good about the brand’, with score of 54%, compared to 55% last week. Barbour follows with 50%, and Lego comes in third at 46%.
This week, Ipsos also asked its community how they feel in the run up to Christmas, with the findings revealing that people are concerned with finances. Yet they aren’t disengaging from the festive season entirely.
Ipsos says “gifts and celebrations are becoming more thoughtful, pared back & intimate”, with people “making the season more about connection, resilience & preservation of tradition in the face of pressure this year”.
On the findings, Brophy says “brands following principles evidenced by the Ipsos Misfits book, combining high creativity with high empathy & brand fit, are winning hearts and minds”.
Other comments from the community reveal that festive advertising feels “warm but increasingly disconnected from real lives”, which Ipsos says “creates an opportunity for brands to show more authenticity, relatability, and the smaller-scale celebrations people are actually living”.
