Disney’s Animated Campaign Is Crowned The Most Emotionally Engaging UK Christmas Ad Of 2020

“From Our Family To Yours” beats spots from Coca-Cola, GOSH and LEGO to become video ad platform Unruly’s No.1 festive ad; John Lewis fails to make top 10 

LONDON – November 26, 2020 – The most moving UK Christmas ad of 2020 is Disney’s “From Our Family To Yours”, according to new research from Unruly. 

The video advertising platform has released a ranking of the most emotionally engaging festive campaigns using its content testing tool, UnrulyEQ. 

Top of Unruly’s UK Christmas tree is Disney’s animated ad, which tells the heartwarming story of a Filipino grandmother’s relationship with her granddaughter and the importance of family traditions during the festive season. 

Almost half of Brits who watched the ad had an intense positive emotional response to the content, making it 126% more moving than the average UK ad. 

That put it just ahead of Coca-Cola’s Christmas campaign, directed by Oscar winner Taika Waititi. The two-and-a-half minute ad, which follows the story of a dad trying to deliver his daughter’s letter to Santa against all the odds, generated an intense emotional response from 44% of viewers 

Great Ormond Street Hospital’s “Home For Christmas” is third after generating twice the positive emotional engagement as the average UK ad, with LEGO in fourth. 

Aldi’s “Will Kevin Get Home?”, Amazon’s “The Show Must Go On” and Sainsbury’s “The Gravy Song” finished fifth, sixth and seventh respectively.  

Other ads to make it into the top 10 include DFS’ “A Comfy Carol”, featuring Wallace and Gromit, Not On The High Street’s “The Magic Of Small Things”, and Argos’s “An Evening with AbracaDaisy & The Incredible Lucy“. 

M&S’ ad, featuring a voiceover from The Crown star Olivia Colman (11th), and John Lewis’s “Give A Little Love” (joint 12th) both failed to make the top 10, along with ads from McDonald’s, Boots, Tesco and Asda. 

Most Emotionally Engaging UK Christmas Ads Of 2020  

Rebecca Waring, Global VP of Insights at Unruly, said: “People are clearly in the mood for high-budget, epic storytelling this festive period. Disney and Coke’s mini-movies are comfortably ahead of the rest of this year’s ads. LEGO, at number 4, is similarly spectacular. As we predicted in our Christmas 2020 Consumer Research, COVID references and serious tones are not resonating as well with consumers. 

“It was heartening to see Sainsbury’s, one of this year’s most distinctive creative executions, score so highly. The ad suffered a backlash from a small but vocal minority of social media users. However, our data shows that when testing against a nationally representative sample, negative responses are negligible, and this was one of the most moving ads of Christmas 2020. In fact, it was the fourth happiest Xmas ad of the year, just behind Coca-Cola, ALDI and DFS. 

“We knew this would be an emotional Christmas, and overall, this year’s ads have proved to be 11% more emotive than last year. But, interestingly, the biggest gains have been in brand favourability (+15%), purchase intent (+16%) and intent to find out more (+25%).” 

To see the full list of ads, view more details of a specific ad’s performance or request an EQ report, visit Unruly’s Holiday Ad Hub.   

Methodology 

Unruly analysed the emotional responses of consumers around the world to 66 festive ads released this year using its content measurement tool, UnrulyEQ, which helps advertisers maximise the impact of their video content across multiple screens to more effectively land brand metrics and target receptive audiences at scale. More than 6,000 consumers have so far taken part in the study. The results were then compared to Unruly’s database of thousands of ads. 

Ads were ranked on the intensity of emotional response, taking into account the norm levels of emotional response in each market to give a fair global comparison.