Tesco and Morrisons enter the Christmas ads stakes – in the wake of John Lewis’s ‘bear and hare’

Two more dollops of Christmas from adland: Tesco and Morrisons.

Tesco and Wieden+Kennedy london have gone rites of passage (well John Lewis doesn’t have a monopoly on the idea) with a family morphing from Sweeney-era haircuts and moustaches (the blokes that is) ‘cos ‘There’s nothing like Christmas.’

It’s all documentary style, ‘non-airbrushed’ they call it,  and a bit Essex with Rod Stewart warbling Forever Young. True to many people’s experience of the festival, no doubt, but it seems to be missing something…Christmas?

Rival Morrisons, meanwhile, is laying the Christmassy bits on a with a trowel with a campaign, ‘Go On…It’s Christmas’ from DLKW/Lowe featuring the nation’s favourite poppets Ant & Dec.

This too is hardly rarefied but it works, chiefly because of some nifty animation from US masters Psyop.

The Sunday Times predicted yesterday that John Lewis’s £1m ‘hare and bear’ ad (or is it the other way around?) will be the most popular viral commercial so far, judging by the three million-odd YouTube hits it’s racked up since Saturday.

Well it’s got a way to go to rival ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ and its fifty million but you never know. JL, like the Melbourne Metro, doesn’t show much product, of course, which is possibly one of the reasons for its success.

But it’s still streets ahead in our Christmas ads competition.