Do emotional Christmas campaigns pay off? What John Lewis and the 2025 tests show

In November 2015, a film of just over two minutes about an old man who lives alone on the Moon drew 22 million views in its first week, according to the British retailer John Lewis, which commissioned it. In the week ending November 14, the stores sold £110.4 million, 15.8% more than the previous week, according to Marketing Week. A week's sales have many causes, and the report records the figure without attributing it solely to the film. John Lewis made its Christmas commercial an annual commitment, and that decision won the Grand Prix at the IPA Effectiveness Awards twice.

John Lewis's Christmas campaign: what the effectiveness awards recorded

The IPA, the institute that brings together British agencies, runs the IPA Effectiveness Awards, which assess campaign effectiveness with a jury and its own methodology. John Lewis won the Grand Prix in 2012 with the Christmas campaigns produced by adam&eve. According to LBB, over two years the chain recorded £1.074 billion in incremental sales and £261 million in profit attributed to the work, with 10% more customers.

In 2016, the chain won the Grand Prix again. The case summarized by Thinkbox shows that between 2012 and 2015, the Christmas campaigns raised seasonal sales by 16% on average and returned more than £8 in profit for every £1 invested. Market share reached 29.6%, the highest in the company's history. Thinkbox also notes how much the season weighs on the business: Christmas accounts for about 20% of John Lewis's annual sales and 40% of its annual profit.

The 2015 film was made in partnership with Age UK, a British charity dedicated to older people, to draw attention to older people who can go a month without speaking to a friend, a neighbor or a family member. The story fits in one sentence: a girl tries to reach out to an old man she sees living alone on the Moon. The brand itself later acknowledged, in an interview with The Drum, that some people found the film too sad. Head of marketing Rachel Swift summed up the lesson by saying that brand fame, brand building and emotion are decisive for commercial success.

Why emotion works in the brand's favor over the long term

Researchers Les Binet and Peter Field analyzed 996 campaigns from 700 brands in the IPA database and published their conclusions in "The Long and the Short of It" in 2013. In the study's official presentation, the effect of emotional campaigns appears as a boost that takes a long time to fade and builds brand value over the years. Binet summed up the idea in one sentence: in the long term, emotion is where the really big profits are.

There is an important caveat. The IPA database is made up of cases entered into effectiveness awards, which gives the study a selection bias. The IPA revised its recommendations in 2018 with the study "Effectiveness in Context" and returned to the topic in 2023.

The 2025 Christmas commercials in System1's tests

System1 measures the audience's emotional response to commercials and gives each film a star rating. According to LBB, which published the company's survey of UK Christmas films, the 2025 Christmas commercials averaged 4.6 stars, the highest in five years. The company says only 1% of ads in general reach five stars. For Christmas 2025, the top twelve scored 5.8 or 5.9, including films from Amazon, Waitrose, Coca-Cola and Heathrow Airport.

The same survey describes the reactions these films sparked. Happiness was the dominant emotion, with about 60% of responses, and neutrality was close to 25%, half the level seen in everyday advertising. Among the factors shared by the top-rated ads, System1 highlighted a sense of place, an engaging narrative and an inclusive cast. The caveat here is that System1 sells its own metric, so the numbers serve as an indication of a trend.

What Brazilian consumers say about affection at Christmas

In Brazil, year-end surveys point in the same direction. A Propmark report from December 2025 covered a study by Natura with Grupo Consumoteca, conducted with about 1,296 people from the country's five regions: 40% said they felt people were more distant, and 51% of Gen Z and 46% of millennials named dates like Christmas as moments that bring people closer. In the same report, the coordinator of the ESPM survey defined gift giving as "an emotional, ritualistic gesture".

The CNDL and SPC Brasil survey for Christmas 2025 adds a behavioral data point: 43% of consumers had already swapped or planned to swap material gifts for experiences, such as trips, dinners, outings and concerts. Another study, by Natura with Consumoteca, found that bank transfers accounted for up to 25% of gift exchanges between close friends and family, according to Propmark. The Brazilian public is saying, with numbers, that it wants to feel something at Christmas.

Emotion in a Christmas campaign needs time for the script

That effect starts on paper. A film that moves people depends on an idea simple enough to be understood in seconds and true enough to touch whoever is watching. John Lewis's man on the Moon is a simple image that carries the theme of loneliness among older people at the end of the year. Getting to an image like that takes time to test different paths, discard the obvious ones and write the scene until it works without explanation.

That is the criterion I use to evaluate a Christmas script before it goes into production. If reading it aloud does not tighten anyone's chin in the room, the story is not there yet, and it is best to find that out while it is still on paper, weeks before the launch. As the first article in this series showed, the campaign needs to be on air before November 27, and this refining work has to fit into the calendar.

In the next article, the stories. A grandfather who studies English on the bus, two teddy bears landing in London and a night watchman in a mannequin factory: Christmas campaigns that moved the world with very few elements and a lot of truth.