adam&eveDDB

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0:06 my name is Matt gay and I work with fergo balance at Adam and Eve and we're the creative directors on John Lewis and wait Ros I've worked at Adam and Eve since 2009 when we first won the John Lewis account and tonight I'm going to talk about the beginner and John Lewis Christmas advertising and his campaigns to the public they become a much loved part of Christmas to adland they've become the most written about dissected awarded and often criticized in the UK and to the agency creative Department it's the biggest and most exciting brief of the year it's to brief all the teams want to work on.

1:00 And it's the brief they all want to crack it's also one of those briefs that make you sick to the stomach you know it's we work with some of the top directors in advertising Kim Garrick Michelle gundry Seb Edwards Oscar Hudson Mark Malloy and the genius DG Wilson who is shot at least five of the spots himself there's a lot of pressure on it and you certainly don't want to be the creative team that does a turkey now it's important at this point to stress the massive role that John Lewis have played in the success of the campaign for their belief in creativity and the commitment to bravery when probably more rational decisions would have made more sense at the time this approach has helped cement a productive partnership over the past decade and more and it's at the beginning of that decade that I want to start as it helps to set the backdrop of this campaign and there are several parallels between 2011 and 2022 by 2011 we produced two beautiful spots for John Lewis Christmas several of the John Lewis Christmas ingredients already existed in these films like the the re-recorded track for instance but both were vignette based and focused heavily on half a dozen sto products there was no story research showed us that people weren't emotionally as engaged in these films as we had hoped so in a brave move John Lewis agreed to move away from averly selling products to something a bit more magical the ad wouldn't be about selling products it would be about the feeling of giving Ben priest the founder of Adam and Eve came to us and said forget the products forget the vignettes I just want a wonderful narrative that encapsulates the feeling of giving a Christmas the result was the long wait directed by Dougall Wilson it featured a small boy who couldn't wait to give his Christmas gift on Christmas morning it was a roaring success with the ♪

3:23 public over the next decade the campaign became bigger and more successful the B set higher each time Disney esque Illustrated animation wonderful CGI characters and animals bouncing on trampolines Elton John made an appearance and a space and it was even a spaceship crashed from space parodies were made merchandise was sold in the hundreds of thousands and over the course of 10 years 1.2 billion was generated in incremental sales so to 2022 against this backdrop we started to look at what we was going to do for this Christmas but we had two factors to consider first we was in the middle of a Rebrand for John Lewis and already in a production to launch the new line for all life's moments the adward player in September 2002 it focused on authentic real life moments and whilst there was some in John Lewis ingredients you knew it as a John Lewis film it was a million miles away from dragons and spaceships and John Lewis understandably wanted some consistency so fantasy was out the second fact to consider was by the beginning of 2002 the world was going to we needed to acknowledge what was happening in the in the real world and read the room and as tempting as it was we felt we couldn't just knock out another Blockbuster when UK families would be struggling come Christmas it was the right thing to do but also scary you know off the back of so much success how could we retain what we knew the public loved but not seem completely out of touch with the real world about this time Martin Beverly our head of strategy started to quote s Nigel Bogle who would say how do you move a brand on without moving it off our answer to was to change the brief from thoughtful gifting to thoughtful gestures and just like they had done in 2011 John Lewis did something extremely Brave we wouldn't create any new characters sell any plush toys or any kind of merchandise that had made them lots of money in the past but rather as a purpose Le brand they decided they wanted to pursue good acts rather than a vertly selling products we would use the un unique platform John Lewis had has at Christmas to encourage good acts now the Christmas air takes an entire year to create and here's a basic timeline of how it works so in Jan we'll write the brief brief the teams fed to April great development and debate and I can tell you there's a lot of debate director treatments and pre-production from May to July August we will shoot September to October is post production.

6:28 And then at the end of October we argue over music November we sit there fingers crossed hoping it lands and then come to this time of year we just actually try and enjoy our own Christmases but the unique briefing of this is is normally in our agency you would brief a team one brief but with J Louis Christmas we brief the entire department together about 50 creatives squashed in the room and everyone doesn't matter how senior you are how Junior has a crack at the brief the room is always deadly silent no one will say anything or ask a question as to give advantage or spark an idea for the team sitting next to you.

7:10 There are certain things that we want to see in the scripts when we get them back certain John Lewis ingrediences we want a single narrative like the stories that we know have been so successful a surprise and ending and something that moves you and and by this I don't necessarily mean moves you to tears it could you know move you to laughter but mostly we're looking for something that we haven't seen before and each year give or take we get hundreds of scripts back probably about 600 to 700 and after several rounds we got several great scripts and presented them to JL however a couple of things bothered us despite the parameters we had set ourselves some of the script was still epic in scale there would have been three minutes extravaganzas and we were seduced by these wonderful stories and got overly excited so we kept having to Reign ourselves in as I said before knowing that families would be struggling at Christmas spending millions and millions on production just didn't seem right the other thing that bothered us is that John Lewis and it bothered John Lewis as well was that John Lewis seemed to lack a role in any of these early scripts we wrote what was our purpose there needed to be a reason for us to create an ad with a purpose-led story it was at this stage that John Lewis told us they were launching an initiative to support young people from care they're building happier Futures program in partnership with who cares Scotland and Action for Children they wanted this to be the purpose for the film so now we had a solid purpose but a purpose in a really complex and emotional space how do you make add as good as everything we've done before but hit the right tone and read the room several weeks went by and we had nothing we were cited by and panic started to set in finally we got a script from Zander har Edward Asha rich mcgran and Andy klf it was really simple actually.

9:13 This is the original script then it was called the arrival back then it's the be the beginner now.

9:19 But it was really s simple of all the ideas presented to us this story really sang out it was heartfelt quietly heroic and most importantly handed the subject matter with respect the POV of this man in his 40s learning how to skateboard regardless of his advancing years public embarrassment and aching joints to have the smallest chance of making a foster child for more at home was perfect it had the handwriting a past ad single narrative and surprising ending and what we liked most about the rug poool reveal was with the the ending was that the rug poool revealed the purpose we were championing him it felt joyful as well as moving and it was a story of a grown man not a child where we had obviously been previously over the last decade we immediately got it over to JL and we had and they loved it as well. And we had our scripts the pre-production on the film was St fate forward but casting was critical the young actress although only playing several seconds had to land the nervous energy and honesty of the ending we also had to be sensitive and not cast any negative stereotypes the dad had to perform levity without being too slapstick we didn't want him to be a good skater either as we wanted this progression to feel real and of course we wanted him to be able to act well enough to land the emotion at the end of the ad thankfully the pair that we cast were brilliant so as we started to look at the ending we we went into storyboard phase after getting a director and we started to scrutinize the ending there was no two ways about it we had to get this moment right it was important that the moment felt authentic to what happens in real life we couldn't sugarcoat it. And we couldn't imply that this child's life was now perfect John Lewis had established an advisory group of experts in the field many of them whom themselves were care experien to ensure we were addressing the real needs of this community they reviewed the ending and advised us on how this interaction would play out in real life it was invaluable to us on a more personal note my sister is a foster parent and I took her through the story boards as well she told me of her experiences how she behaved and how children reacted when they came to her house to stay as with the panel it was priceless information so music the last hurdle with the film shot and edited we came to music and music as I said before causes unbelievable amount of arguments predominantly in the past the tracks have been re-records very warm and heartfelt in some cases even describe The Narrative of of the ad itself so we had a desire this year to change that up. And we didn't really want to do a re record at all and early on we initially wanted something very very different very joyful something that was a nod toward skateboarding and the '90s the idea being that this was something our dad would have listened to when he was young we started the search before the shoot and listened to hundreds of tracks we got really excited about some pop rock tracks and some new school hip-hop tracks but once we saw the edit and played these tracks a picture we realized we were completely and utterly wrong we faced a few issues firstly the B tracks were overpowering your visuals and getting inw the story secondly and most importantly the tracks were completely insensitive to the ending even though the plan was to drop out the lyrics and pair back the music slightly it didn't work.

13:21 And we knew the tone was way way off not to me mention lacking any emotional punch at all we then did another search for music that was more sensitive to the ending only for the reverse to happen whilst these new track work well for the ending they were overtly emotional for what the viewer was seeing and we felt they were quite leading like as if it was signposting that something emotional was about to happen the film was almost had two halves in that aspects and we were really struggling to solve it. There were tracks that were okay but nothing that made you feel feel anything I think we always when we look at these films and that music comes in we know you just feel something immediately and we know we had landed it. And we just couldn't get it right and again not for the first time Panic started to set in then finally Ed and Zander believed they had something interesting and shared it with us and when I opened the link it was buffering and I saw this image and to be honest with you I thought that was winding me up I mean this is to John Lis Christmas ad after all but as I played it I got really excited this this cover of All the Small Things. There was a nod to skating culture it felt like it worked with the humor up front as had dad's struggles it then BEC sparse and gentle towards the end and had the potential to be sensitive to the ending Anthony Moore at factory cut it a picture and played it to us and to everyone's great relief it just worked brilliantly it made me smile and to be honest it made me want to cry I think as much out of exhaustion as anything else at the time.

15:08 But we knew we had it we played it to John Lewis and they absolutely loved it as well so November 10th 2022 we played out with baited breath and thankfully the response was brilliant not only from the press and the public but from lots of people who came from the care system themselves and for me hearing these heartfelt responsive is what really mattered the most knowing that we had got the tone right and read the room so before I play the film I I just wanted to sort of acknowledge some of our partners in the process of this it's kind of over the last decade become a bit of a family with the people that work tirelessly on this so Anthony Moore the sound engineer at factory and his team there Abby Leland and Abby leand music Ludo and his team at 1920 and the guys at work post and the lads xanda Ed rich and Andy who tenaciously kept going on a very very complex and emotional brief so that.

16:19 That's me guys thank you for coming out in these Arctic conditions to listen to the talks tonight and thank you for having me it's been a pleasure cheers w [Applause]