Reported by The Guardian
James Norton and Lucy Punch star as a youthful Mr and Mrs Claus in lively ad about shared moments as well as shopping
For years the “Christmas advert moment” has belonged to one brand. John Lewis’s syrupy commercials featuring piano ballads and tearjerker storylines have given the 160-year-old department store a cultural head start in the dash for festive profits.
This year, however, there’s one high-street rival with a sackful of tricks to make up the ground. Marks & Spencer has brought out the big guns – in the form of a topless Santa, played by the small-screen heart-throb James Norton .
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The lively M&S Christmas ad has already drawn comparisons with John Lewis’s effort , which features Kristin Scott Thomas as a glamorous granny on the hunt to turn one room of her huge townhouse into a fun “gran cave”.
In the M&S corner Norton and Lucy Punch play a youthful Mr and Mrs Claus – with a lingering shot of Norton with his top off.
When John Lewis launched its advert this week, its portrayal of wealth was criticised, with a sprawling house and ungrateful grandchildren said to be out of touch with the wider mood of the nation.
But shots of Norton topless aside from an M&S white cotton towel have gone viral. Men’s Health magazine described him as a “shredded Santa”, saying his Saint Nick “leaves the traditional mince-pie physique looking a little dated”.
Gurjit Degun, the creativity and cultural editor at Campaign, a business magazine that covers advertising and marketing, described the M&S ad as “playful and tongue in cheek without being silly”.
M&S has combined its fashion, food, beauty and homeware strands into one campaign rather than individual adverts, a strategy it last used in 2017. Norton plays an undercover Santa who shaves off his beard so he can experience the buildup to Christmas incognito, while Punch is a snobbish Mrs Claus, similar to her character in Amandaland .
After the couple gatecrash a dinner party, swing by a children’s carol service and discover “picky bits”, the key takeaway from M&S is that Christmas…