We've already seen some great holiday adverts as the festive season begins, from the handcrafted stop-motion Levi's Christmas advert, to Prada's cartoon wonderland directed by former Disney animator John Pomeroy. Alas, the historic master of the genre has come up lacking.
In the UK, the arrival of the John Lewis Christmas advert was long seen as the unofficial start of the season. The department store chain features twice in our pick of the best Christmas adverts of all time. But its 2026 offering has sparked a fierce backlash over what people see as confused messaging, with some people even calling for a boycott of the store.
Titled Gloria and Pickles, the 2026 John Lewis Christmas advert is an opulent affair. Set to a Sam Fender cover of The Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want, it sees National treasure Kristin Scott Thomas star as a wealthy grandma who can't find anything to entertain her spoiled grandchildren and stop them from messing up her huge, gloomy mansion.
The kids are, naturally, unimpressed by an ancient Fisher-Price Little Snoopy Toy. She's about to give them some cash when the wooden dog turns into canine Chat-GPT with the voice of Paul Whitehouse and admonishes her for the lack of imagination. "Do you want them to like you?" the toy asks her at one point.
Off they go shopping, passing through several sub-standard stores until arriving at John Lewis. There, Kristin spends a fortune on decorations to turn one of her many spare rooms into a festive party space, which convinces the kids to finally show her some affection.
The message is supposed to be that a personal gift is more in keeping with the spirit of Christmas than cold, hard cash. But what comes across is that, either way, spending money is the only way to get you grandkids to like you. Good luck if you can't afford to shop at John Lewis.
According to the creative effectiveness company System 1, the ad achieved 5.6 stars on its rating system, making it John Lewis's strongest-performing festive campaign since Excitable Edgar in 2019. Its testing found that 61% of viewers felt happy watching the advert, nearly twice the UK TV advertising average.
That's not the impression you get from the comments on social media. Writing on X Piers Morgan (what's the opposite of a national treasure?) described it as "possibly the worst advert I’ve ever seen for anything".
There's some hyperbole there. It least it's not Coca-Cola's AI slop. But he has a point, and a lot of people agree. The family is unlikeable, the children entitled and overindulged, and the materialistic tone feels out of touch amid the cost of living crisis, reminding younger viewers how skint they are (everything from the dog to Kristin's outfits is shoppable). Even the colour grading is depressing.
John Lewis switched from Adam&Eve to Saatchi & Saatchi as its creative agency back in 2023, and the change shows. Unlike the whimsical ads of the past that became such an annual event, this piece feels cold and clinical. It's more obviously geared towards conversion, attempting to shape behaviour by guilt tripping grandparents.
