Jeff Goldblum joins the glut of Christmas TV ad launches as Cadbury, Currys, Argos and Aldi join the fray with £1.3bn expected to be spent on TV advertising this festive season.
The Jurassic Park star is fronting Currys PC World first Christmas brand campaign in a five-part £10m TV push.
The campaign, which sees a Goldblum helping people who are having a disappointing Christmas, is one of almost a dozen brands to launch their festive ads over the first weekend of November.
Major brands include Marks & Spencer, Boots and John Lewis are set to launch their campaigns in a busy weekend for TV advertising.
A total of £1.3bn will be spent on TV advertising in the last three months of this year to entice the public to buy big this Christmas, including Cadbury’s biggest-ever campaign with a £10m budget.
Cadbury is running a TV-led campaign featuring a super-sized advent calendar made up of 24 giant freight trucks that will drive to different parts of the UK.
TV spend in the final quarter is expected to be up 12% compared to 2010, with a total of £5.2bn expected to be spent on all forms of advertising.
Internet ad spend will be the greatest, at £2.2bn in the fourth quarter, according to data from the Advertising Association and Warc.
Brands are pulling out the stops to differentiate themselves, with Argos looking to go the opposite way to the typically heart-string pulling approach of a John Lewis with an “adrenaline-fuelled 60 seconds of extreme winter sports action”.
Argos, which has used ad agency CHI&Partners, has taken the unusual step of signing up star Canadian snowboarder Justin Lamoureux and a team of 50 professionals, including Star Wars mask wearing wingsuit experts, in a campaign that will break in Channel 4’s Gogglebox.
“We wanted to create a Christmas experience which would provide a breath – or a gulp – of fresh air in amongst all of the usual cuddly animals, love songs and sentimentalism,” said Stephen Vowles, marketing director at Argos.
