(almost) always thinking

Somewhere in my blog reader this week (I really should have saved it) there popped up a post about how perhaps this year’s crop of festive ads were a little too knowing (if you know whose post it was, please comment & I’ll link to them).

I think the post referenced in particular the new M&S ad, which is based around festive celebrity vox pops and includes Phillip Glenister’s announcement that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without “that girl prancing around in her underwear”.

By breaking the fourth wall, M&S move away from their previous festive fantasy lifestyle approach (Take That and Twiggy in a country house at Christmas and Bondesque fantasies) and sort of get back to basics, but I’m not sure that the M&S brand needs much help in the ‘sensible jumpers and nice quality stuffing for the turkey’ area.

Given that Morrisons have spent the last few years using celebrities to push shopping trolleys through unlikely locations in pursuit of their freshness message, perhaps M&S’s new chief exec will encourage something slightly more lifestyley for Christmas 2010?