Our Top 5 Inclusive Christmas Adverts

It’s not surprising that Christmas campaigns are financially important for companies. (Did you know that research shows that every £1 spent on advertising returns £6 to the UK economy?) But they’re also really important for brand awareness.

Christmas campaigns can have long-lasting positive effects on brands. John Lewis is a great example! The release of their Christmas campaign has become a seasonal event in the UK.

But, the best way to connect with as many people as possible is to make sure they’re inclusive.

So, here are our top 5 favourite inclusive Christmas adverts!

Screenshot from the ‘Our Holidays’ Ritz ad.

Ritz

The Ritz ‘The Gathering: Where There's Love, There's Family’ ad from 2020 follows three different individuals celebrating Christmas without their families. Despite this, they embrace Christmas with new families they have found.

This is on our list because for such a short ad, it includes a wide variety of representation!

There are different skin tones, ages, sexualities, as well as different family dynamics and experiences of Christmas. Ritz takes a universal theme, everyone can relate to wanting to be with family at Christmas time and applies it to many different types of people.

Ritz’s 2022 ad takes the same approach.

‘Our Holidays’ is just thirty seconds long and shows people from a range of ethnicities and cultures celebrating the holidays in their own traditional and religious ways, while still including a variety of skin tones and ages.

We love to see brands including holidays other than the Christmas saturation that comes this time of year!

M&S

In 2022, M&S released ‘Gifts That Give’. The ad follows families opening presents on Christmas morning, only for their street to be flooded with various communities of people and a street party ensues.

It’s still rare to see people with disabilities in represented in marketing, but M&S included it naturally!

Not only that, but the campaign features over 70 cast members from some of those real local communities the ad vows to help. This allows the ad to authentically include a variety of people from different cultures and with different lifestyles.

Boots

The Boots 2022 ad, named ‘Joy For All,’ follows the premise of a woman finding a pair of glasses on the bus. But when she puts them on, she sees the ideal Christmas presents for those around her.

This is such a simple concept that stays true to the spirit of Christmas and can be applied to a wide variety of people! Boot show people of a range of ages and skin tones enjoying their presents. Not to mention the inclusion of a young drag queen!

It begs the question, if people have use for your product, why not capitalise on it and include them in your marketing?

Screenshot from the ‘Give a Little Love’ John Lewis ad.

John Lewis

The John Lewis Christmas ad is highly anticipated each year. The Christmas ads from the last three years have all been inclusive in a variety of ways!

2022’s ad, ‘The Beginner,’ focuses on a Dad learning to skateboard to impress the child from care he’s taking in.

‘The Unexpected Guest,’ released in 2021 follows a young boy teaching an alien about Christmas and it’s traditions.

But we especially love their 2020 ‘Give a Little Love’ which shows how one good deed can inspire another to create a circle of support and love. The ad also highlights that everyone is deserving of this by including a variety of ethnicities and ages.

In 2021, John Lewis customer director, Claire Pointon said that they are trying to represent ‘a modern Britain.’ In order to do that they have been consistently inclusive in their advertising, making sure they keep covering a range of individuals and experiences.

For marketing to be truly inclusive, it needs to be consistent or else it comes across as tokenistic and even false. If you advertise inclusively once but then don’t follow it up, you run the risk of making those individuals you no longer include feel cheated.

Afrocenchix

Afrocenchix is a Black-owned hair care business that was established to “make safe, effective, ethical products available to everyone (especially Black women) and to share scientifically sound healthy hair care practices using natural ingredients.”

In 2021, they launched the first black hair Christmas advert on British television with the “Get it right this Christmas” that played on Channel 4.

Of the advert CEO Rachael Twumasi-Corson said, “We’re ecstatic to put positive representation on television in the form of a relatable hair story.”

And that’s exactly why we love this ad so much! Representation is so important and we're so glad to see afros get the attention they deserve!