Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot is consistently voted the UK’s favourite Christmas ad, but the cosy consensus means that he doesn’t get much traction on social media where people love to hate.
Kevin has had a 91% the positive reaction on X/Twitter (according to Sprout Social), but John Lewis’ venus fly trap and Marks & Spencer’s flying elf have secured a lot more engagements, messages and impressions for the brands.
Aldi generated 1,652 messages and 2,773 engagements (i.e. likes, comments, shares) on Twitter/X; Marks and Spencer’s Clothing & Home spot generated 15,199 messages and 136,025 engagements; and John Lewis scored 3,248 messages and 17,928 engagements.
Still king of the Christmas ads, John Lewis secured the highest reach with 106,085,031 impressions, while Marks & Spencer counted 56,514,282 possible views of their advert on X/Twitter. Aldi’s impressions, meanwhile, reached 17,169,303.
Across eight retailers (John Lewis, Waitrose, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Lidl and Asda) However, positive sentiment across the retailers averaged at only 51%, as people took to the platform to complain about whatever it was they found to annoy them. And this is just for the TV ads – before Twitter had a field day with the M&S “flag burning” non-incident.
At least people are talking about ads in the real world and it’s not just adland that gets worked up about the Christmas campaigns.
