Buster is most engaging ad but M&S is mums' fave

The mums have spoken, and it is Marks & Spencer’s Christmas ad featuring Mother Christmas has been voted the favourite for 2016, pushing John Lewis’ Buster the boxer ad into second place.
The annual poll from parenting site ChannelMum.com found over a third more mums rated the M&S ad as their favourite than previous winner John Lewis, with 37% to 24% favouring the polar adventure.
The results – which were compiled just six hours after final major retailer Sainsbury’s released its festive offering – revealed Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot took 18% of the vote for best-loved Xmas ad, followed by 9% for Sainsbury’s, 4% for Waitrose and 3% for catalogue firm Very. House of Fraser scraped in with 2% but Argos, Tesco and Lidl held the bottom spot, on 1% each.
M&S was also crowned the most effective Xmas ad, with 40% of mums saying they are more likely to shop with the store as a result of seeing the commercial. M&S was almost neck and neck with last year’s most effective winner Aldi, with 38% of mums agreeing they would be more likely to shop with the discounter after viewing its festive jaunt.
However, just 22% will switch to John Lewis, despite the estimated £7m cost – £6m of which is being spent on media – of Buster the boxer. Indeed, nine in ten of the 1,546 mums polled said they thought the £7m spend was ‘excessive’ with 46% claiming it has turned them off shopping there. A further 17% will switch to Sainsbury’s and 14% to Asda after watching their ads.
While mums obviously do have much influence, a separate study shows that the John Lewis’ ad is the most emotionally engaging festive commercial.
Based on facial recognition technology which measured people’s reactions as they watched the ads, Buster scored better than 95% of the 5,700 ads ever tested by Realeyes in terms of emotional engagement, which is a combined measure of how the ad scores on attraction, retention, engagement and impact
Furthermore, it scored in the highest 1% of ads ever tested among women under 30.
“Initial industry opinion seems to be that Buster isn’t a ‘rockstar’ edition from John Lewis but consumer’s emotional reaction says otherwise – it’s more engaging than their previous five offerings,” said Realeyes’ chief executive Mihkel Jaatma. “Its success is very much driven by happiness, a significant departure from last year’s melancholic Man on the Moon which even John Lewis admitted may have been too sad.”