You know Christmas is coming when our screens begin to fill with Christmas commercials! The Christmas commercials released by Ikea and Paypal are making waves at the moment for two very different reasons. Over the past few weeks, Paypal’s controversial Christmas commercial under attack by parents who claim it’s ruining Christmas by suggesting that Santa isn’t real.
The commercial tells the story of two brothers who are convinced that they are not receiving any Christmas presents after they haven’t seen their parents go out Christmas shopping. They then try to catch their parents with their Christmas parents in the lead up to the big day, before discovering a pile of presents under their tree on Christmas morning. The ad finishes with the message to parents to “check out before they know it” by shopping online.
After receiving a flood of complaints on social media, Paypal released a statement: “We just want to take a moment to say we’re sorry that some people have been upset by our new UK Christmas advert. Our ad aims to take a fun look at those Christmas presents kids know come from their presents, and not in any way say Father Christmas doesn’t also deliver presents to them.”
This commercial from PayPal is a stark contrast from the messages contained within the hugely popular and well received ad released by Ikea Spain last year which is again doing the rounds on social media. Ten real life families were asked to participate in the making of this commercial, where their children aged between 4 to 9 years of age were asked to write two letters, the first to The Three Kings (Spain’s version of Santa) with a list of what they wanted for Christmas and the second letter to their parents. It’s the contents of the children’s wish lists to their parents which pulled on the heartstrings of people all around the world. What these children asked for from their parents isn’t what you’d expect, with requests for simple things like enjoying an afternoon together, having more family dinners and doing experiments at home dominating their lists.
What’s you favourite Christmas commercial?
