With brand owners seemingly launching their Christmas campaigns as soon as autumn kicks in – many opened their festive TV spots last week – new research claims the pressure is on John Lewis, Coke and M&S to come up trumps as they are the most anticipated ads of the season.
We already have the likes of Asda (pictured), Lloyds, Lidl, Mulberry, Curry PC World, Waitrose, TK Maxx and Body Shop on air, and John Lewis’ Christmas ad is set to launch tomorrow (Friday).
According to programmatic technology experts RadiumOne, John Lewis (cited by 27% of respondents) narrowly pips Coca-Cola (26%) and Marks & Spencer (24%) as the brand people most closely associate with Christmas.
Women (32%) are much more likely than men (21%) to associate John Lewis and Christmas, as are 35- to 54-year-olds (32%) and, bizarrely, people in Wales (38%).
Associating Coca-Cola with Christmas drops with age – from 36% of 16- to 34-year-olds to 16% of people 55-plus – while it increases with age for M&S, from 16% of 16- to 34-year-olds to 28% of over 55s. Regionally, association with Coca-Cola and Christmas is strongest in Yorkshire (36%), for M&S, it’s in the North East (35%).
Consequently, these brands hold the same podium places for the most anticipated Christmas TV ad – John Lewis (38%) ahead of Coke (37%) and M&S (27%). Women (43%), those aged 35 to 44 (45%) and people in the West Midlands (50%) are most looking forward to John Lewis’ TV ad.
Britons over 16 are gearing up to watch a total of 296 million hours* of TV per day over the Christmas period. They will watch an average of 5.7 hours a day across various screens, with a square-eyed one in five (21%) planning to spend over ten hours a day watching TV programmes.
Despite the rise of tablet, mobile phone and laptop viewing, almost seven in ten (68%) people say the TV set will be the only device on which they will watch TV over Christmas. However, 30% will use some form of connected device to watch TV; laptops (19%) being the most popular ahead of tablets (11%), desktop computers (10%) and smartphones (9%).
“Gathering in front of the TV set is as much a part of the shared Christmas experience as the turkey dinner, presents and the tree,” said Mark Middlemas, RadiumOne’s director of communications. “However, digital technology is fundamentally changing TV behaviour and this part of the shared experience. Connected devices will play a major part in the huge amount of TV to be watched but will result in less of it happening as a group crowded round the TV set. Instead, we’ll see Christmas TV increasingly consumed individually around smaller, more personal screens.”
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