M&S Clothing & Home goes for ‘giving’ while Not on the High Street is all about ‘gifting’ for Christmas 2022

Engine 337 and Marks & Spencer Clothing & Home have used The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey for this year’s Christmas campaign, with a soundtrack provided by Harry Styles’ Treat People with Kindness.

The centrepiece ad is less about the glitzy A-list and more about community groups – including a Bengali dance troupe and a Bolton brass band – and the good causes supported by the retailer.

The film itself is a fairly generic Christmas offering, with the products taking a back seat compared to previous years. Much of the real heavy lifting in this campaign will be done online and in social media, but the TV sets out M&S’s stall.

MAA creative scale: 5.5

New Commercial Arts’ spot for online marketplace Not on the High Street flags up a series of different reasons for giving gifts at Christmas, and is unusually (for this year) free of any mention of good causes.

Not a big hitter in the Christmas advertising stakes, but still doing its bit for independent retailers.

MAA creative scale: 5

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About Emma Hall

Emma Hall is a journalist and editorial consultant and is the former Europe Editor of Ad Age, where she covered European marketing advertising, digital and media stories. She has written for newspapers including the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and the Telegraph, and was previously a section editor at Campaign. Emma started her career in New York as a researcher for a biography of Keith Richards.