Here in the UK, our television and media adverts in the run up to Christmas are predominantly about food; luxury food, buying a LOT of it and eating to excess. Supermarkets go all in for party food and there's often specials if you buy 3 packs of food instead of 2.

Then straight after Christmas, diet adverts are everywhere – subtly, or sometimes not – that you need to lose weight in the new year and work off the excess you've eaten during the festivities. The supermarkets will then put diet and healthy food on offer and in prominent displays, things like low fat yoghurt, salad, weight loss meal replacements etc.

I am curious whether this is just a UK phenomenon or whether it happens in other countries too?


9 comments

  2. In Begium: mostely commercials from supermarkets and online stores to buy. All in Christmas themes; mostely about family coming together.

  3. In addition to /u/snowmanseeker’s question – our major supermarkets and department stores here in the UK really push the boat out with big Christmas adverts.

    Asda and Boots have been quite notable this year.

    Aldi usually spoof stuff like the Coca-Cola trucks, to the point they now have a character called ‘Kevin the Carrot’ in their ads year round.

    A department store called John Lewis always does a big heart-warming advert (and there’s a VERY polite man in the USA who beat them to the @johnlewis username on Twitter, so his notifications always get flooded at this time of year…)

  4. One thing I noticed: it started on Dec 6. As soon as Sinterklaas was done, I got like 6 emails about Christmas sales. It’s mostly supermarkets that market special seasonal food.

  5. You get adverts trying to outdo each other with their heart warming messages, then there’s the sheer volume of perfume/aftershave adverts that make absolutely no sense, and then once Christmas Day is over it’s adverts for cruises and cheap sofas that aren’t actually cheap because they’re on discount for 364 days of the year.

  6. Ireland is much the same as Britain, plus we get some of your channels and see your ads. Ours are food, clothes, toys, make-up, toiletries and other gifts, plus the various non-retail companies doing Christmas ads, to wish customers well, like banks for example.

    There are two great Christmas ads that I love from companies. Barrys make tea. They have [this wonderful radio ad](https://youtu.be/Ab0-T0KkJzY?si=hs7WS_r5NE0Re_sL). It is very atmospheric. It has been on radio for years. While a lot of you may not be familiar with Barry’s, you all know Guinness. The have a classic [Christmas ad](https://youtu.be/mVudFaYSjq0?si=OdFL7Jj_GMINVzMT) featuring different places in Ireland. Starting at the Custom House in Dublin, the finest building in the city, it shows clips from Cork, Galway, Belfast and other locations, before finishing at one of the gates at the Guinness brewery. It isn’t the main gate, but a nice one and works well for this ad.

    As soon as Christmas Day is over, that all stops and we are into new year stuff, like January sales, health and fitness, quitting smoking and so on.

  7. In Italy it’s mostly about children’s toys, perfumes, jewelry and, of course, food. After that we have the advertisement about the discounts to buy the surplus left after the Christmas shopping craze. Diet is apparently not a concern to us 😁

  8. Toy commercials. Lots of them. Ngl, It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to sit and watch them every christmas. Takes me back.

  9. Overly sentimental ads, especially coming from the big service providers (NOS, MEO, Vodafone). They tend to be well made ads but I can’t help but feel cynical towards them.

    The supermarket chains also tend to have big Christmas ads. Pingo Doce used to come up with a new earworm song each year for their ads, though they seem to have settled on one now. Continente usually has a 3D animated toy ad featuring a diva hippopotamus called Popota. I remember when they brought back their old bird mascot Leopoldina for one of those ads, where both she and Popota had a duet and Portuguese social media went crazy 😂

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