Firstly, this advert by Sainsbury's in 2013 was picked and reaction in the class was almost unanimous seeing the advert as touching, heartwarming and uplifting rather than sentimental and cynical. Genuine emotion using a hand-held camera to make it feel like an authentic home movie.
Sainsbury's have tried to replicate this 'spirit of Christmas' theme to position their brand as about family and keeping the home fires burning with a more contentious 2014 Christmas advert. Once again most of the class felt that this was heart-warming and memorable.
Charlie Brooker also noticed this advert and has his own forthright opinion which he describes when discussing Christmas adverts for 2014.
"Shivering in a frosty trench – or “the frozen aisle”, in Sainsbury’s parlance – they pause to sing Silent Night, have a kickaround with their German counterparts, and bond over a chocolate bar. It’s all very poignant, if you mentally delete the bit where a supermarket logo hovers over the killing fields, which you can’t.
Boringly, the advert stops short of showing us the events of the following day, when war was resumed and they reverted to bayoneting one another in the face. Nectar points for each headshot, lads! Kill two Jerries, get one free!
Millions of young men were slaughtered during the first world war – “body-bagged for life”, in Sainsbury’s parlance – and doubtless as they lay dying in foreign fields, gazing down at what remained of their mud-caked, punctured, broken bodies, gasping their final agonised breaths, it would have been a great source of comfort for them to know their noble sacrifice would still be honoured a century later, in an advert for a shop."
Sainsbury's advert
Should the First World War be used to advertise a supermarket?
Is the supermarket commemorating the anniversary of the start of the war?
How do you respond to the advert?
Suggest there readings and identify appropriate audiences.
Negotiated
Opposite
Preferred
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