‘Hot’ Santa drives the customers wild for Target
We’ve had the ‘hot priest’ in Fleabag and the ‘hot rabbi’ in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This. Now we’ve got a hot Santa in Target’s Christmas ad.
Our silver-bearded hero heads out of his luxury pad, all dressed in red. He leaves the reindeers behind as he revs up his sporty red pick-up truck (number plate: ‘Sleigh’), with Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild playing on the stereo. Arriving in a Target parking lot, he gets out, adjusts his ‘Kris K’ name badge, and heads into work.
Just when you think that Target have won Christmas advertising, it gets even better. Follow-up ads take the idea and turn it into a seductive promotional campaign: they show Santa pointing out deals in store and wowing the customers. This one describes him to a friend as “weirdly hot”:
Creative by Mythology, directed by Hungry Man’s Wayne McClammy.
The Americans are giving the Brits a run for their money in the Christmas ad stakes this year, with Orchard’s “Where’s Wally?” spot for Etsy making a worthy MAA ad of the week.
MAA creative scale: 8.5