John Lewis comes out fighting in radical change of direction from adam&eveDDB

Sharon White’s new John Lewis is coming back from lockdown with a new Anyday range, “John Lewis quality and style at everyday prices,” quite a radical departure.

Impact is clearly the intention (at times JL ads have been a touch soporific in the past) and, short of signing up non-fan Carrie Symonds, agency adam&eveDDB has gone all out to deliver it. Complete with prices too, which is a newie for JL which was mostly too gentlemanly in the past to mention them.

Customer director Claire Pointon says: “Our new Anyday range offers John Lewis quality and style at everyday prices and this is the central thought behind our new advertising campaign. The campaign feels different in tone and creative from our usual adverts because we really want to showcase how customers live their lives, and highlight the role we can play in their everyday lives.

“In the advert, we’ve purposefully placed our Anyday products in real, everyday life moments which they can relate to, encouraging them to consider John Lewis as a place they can come and shop with us for more frequent, everyday items. In addition, and to highlight the great everyday value that Anyday delivers to customers, we’ve called out the price of our products for the first time ever in TV advertising.”

Some people will hate it, thinking it’s just not John Lewis. But JL. which is a mutual and can’t tap shareholders for extra funds, is in a life-or-death high street struggle. It’s already closed a number of big stores.

So it’s come out fighting and is all the better for it.

MAA creative scale: 8.5.