Throughout a decade of John Lewis Christmas adverts, four-legged friends come out on top for UK social media users

The John Lewis Christmas advert is arguably the most hotly anticipated retail ad of the festive season in the UK, dividing opinions and drawing comparisons with previous years. Social media management and social listening expert, Hootsuite, has delved into the past 11 years of John Lewis Christmas adverts, analysing the Twitterverse to see what the UK really thinks.

‘Buster the Boxer’ knocks out the competition

The 2016 advert featuring Buster the Boxer watching on in envy as foxes, badgers and other wildlife bounced on brand new trampoline brought a huge amount of joy and laughter to viewers, especially when he eventually got to have a bounce himself, ahead of his humans. Examples of the conversation on social include these Trump/Hilary Clinton parody, Time magazine, and Mashable tweets.

Buster the Boxer gained more traction on Twitter than any other John Lewis advert in the 11-year period from 11 October 2011 – 8 December 2021, earning 61,971 mentions, with a higher proportion of those mentions being positive rather than negative.

Buster the Boxer was also the only year where male mentions outweighed female mentions.

Buster the Boxer left this year’s John Lewis advert, An Unexpected Guest, in the dust, with nearly ten times as many mentions on social media, and significantly more positive mentions.

Cute and cuddly animals mean more positivity

Through its social listening tool, Hootsuite also tracked sentiment on social media posts over the years. Positive sentiment peaked for 2014’s Monty the Penguin ad, in which a penguin looking for love gets his wish at Christmas, capturing the nation’s hearts (Examples include: Crying from cute and sad, Awww cute, Blubbering into corn flakes).

The Bear and the Hare (2013) and Excitable Edgar (2019) came in at a close second and third in positive sentiment. The data suggests where there is an animal playing the central protagonist, the reception is significantly more positive and well received. The audience seems to react more lovingly when there is a Christmas-only theme that is brought to life through cute and cuddly creatures rather than another agenda being weaved into the story.

Following 2016’s Brexit vote and the US election of Donald Trump, many even called on the John Lewis advert to save 2016 (Save 2016, Brexit reference, 2016 commentary, World needs John Lewis advert).

Brings a tear to the eye

In terms of emotion, 48% of all mentions showed signs of sadness, while 42% showed signs of joy. The mentions of sadness were mainly the audience showing how emotional the ads made them feel, rather than them being sad themselves (Gets me every time, Shed a tear). Two crying emojis were also amongst the top emojis used in mentions about the ads, coming in just after a Christmas tree and a wrapped present.

2015’s Man on the Moon drove the greatest number of sad mentions as a young girl tried to capture the attention of a lonely old man who lived on the moon. This was also accompanied by a cover of Oasis’ Half the World Away which also brought home the tears (So many tears, Crying emoji, Yes it made me cry).

Keep it simple

With the addition of political elements being woven into the ads in recent years, some feel that the ads should just be about Christmas rather than another agenda.

2016 was a peak for John Lewis ads. Leading up to 2016, the adverts gained more and more traction until Buster the Boxer, after which the following five iterations received far fewer mentions. Are viewers growing tired of the John Lewis ads? According to Wikipedia, Buster the Boxer cost £6 million less than the previous year, and The Boy and the Piano, which received a third of Buster the Boxer’s mentions, is rumoured to have cost £5 million alone in fees for Elton John – showing that it isn’t all about the biggest names or budgets.

The first three quarters of 2021 have seen an unprecedented surge in demand for industrial floor space in the Eastern M25 market as the economy recovers from the impacts of the pandemic. Glenny’s latest research on the key market which acts as a major artery into the London economy has shown that demand accelerated to 28.6m sq ft pushing rents to record levels, having reach £30 per sq ft in the key East London market.

John Bell, Head of Business Space at Glenny comments on the latest research and the promising start to this year, “Our latest research has illustrated the important role that the Eastern M25 market is going to play in the ‘opening up of the London economy. There are 9.4m people in Greater London and the Eastern M25 provides a vital link between London and the rest of the world. Goods coming into London Gateway need to be quickly transported to their final destinations.”

Following a relatively slow start to the year, with the economy still in the midst of the third lockdown, the second and third quarters have seen an acceleration in take up with the year to date figure now standing at 5.8m sq ft and the full year figure set to reach 8.0m sq ft for the second successive year.

Bell adds, “We have seen another exceptional year in our region and the latest demand figures point to a continuation of this trend. The demand for space is being boosted by on line shopping but also companies who need to revisit their supply chains in the light of supply shortages as the economy continues to get back to full speed. There is a real need for new supply to be delivered into this market in order to maintain the capital’s economic recovery.”

This point is re enforced by the fact that supply has now returned to levels last seen before the pandemic. Of the total 9.3m sq ft on the market only 1.9m sq ft is in grade A space. What is even more poignant is there are no new Big Box units in the Eastern M25 and demand from this sector of the market now stands at 12.7m sq ft.

Bell concludes that, “The next 12-18 months should see a number of new schemes coming forward providing much needed solutions for larger distribution and logistics operators. This market is severely under supplied, as was evidenced by Made.com’s 387,000 sq ft expansion at London Gateway and Ikea’s acquisition of the 450,000 sq ft Powerhouse in Dartford ahead of completion. There are very few alternatives to providing good routes into the London market.”

Offices

The Eastern M25 office market continued to show signs of recovery as workers returned to the office after the pandemic. Demand for space moved to record levels, with a total of 3.7m sq ft of requirements registered at the end of Q3 2021. Contrary to belief, the major focus of demand has been in the Greater London market, with businesses still looking to locate in London in preference to following the satellite office model approach that gathered traction during the pandemic. Supply, particularly of larger buildings, is focused in the East London and Docklands market and this should act as a major magnet for occupiers.

A Somerset-based entrepreneur who runs a charity dedicated to improving the lives of young children in Africa has marked the expansion of the charity’s work with a trip to the continent.

James Alexandroff is the settlor and trustee of the Perivoli Foundation, a UK registered charity that funds a nursery school teacher trainer programme in Sub-Saharan Africa called Perivoli Schools Trust.

“It’s really just Blue Peter on steroids,” says James. “We employ trainers to show the nursery school teachers how to make games and educational activities out of recyclable waste materials. They tend to have no money or training themselves, so this helps them to create play activities at no cost”.

The teachers are shown how to use things like yoghurt cartons, bottle tops, loo rolls, pieces of cardboard, discarded garments and tin cans to make stimulating activities from a toy shop to matching puzzles, counting games and dressing up corners.

James – a Bristol University alumni – established the programme in 2013 starting initially in Namibia and has since helped to train over 10,000 nursery school teachers in Namibia, Malawi and Zambia. The Trust is aiming is to reach up to 200,000 more teachers across nine countries in Sub Saharan Africa over the coming decades – ultimately helping more than 5 million children.

“The core aim of the Perivoli Schools Trust programme is to address very high dropout rates that children face once they reach state-funded primary school,” added James.

“Children who are not stimulated through play in their early years find it very hard to cope with formal education when they reach primary school.

“It is especially challenging for girls, who tend to fall pregnant once they reach puberty at 13 or 14 if they struggle at school.  Studies show that a girl who can read has two children on average, whereas a girl who can’t has five. Our goal says is to get the girls to read before they leave nursery school.”

With the population of many African countries doubling every eight years, the size of the Continent is set to go from 17% of the world’s population today to more than 40% by the end of the century. The Perivoli Schools Trust programme could have important implications for the demographics of the region, as long as it can be scaled fast enough.

The purpose of James’ recent trip was to launch the programme in Botswana and Uganda, which takes the countries covered by the programme to five. It is run in each country entirely by local people and employs over 200 Trainers who interact with 25 nursery school teachers at a time, delivering sixteen training modules over two years. Once a teacher completes the course, they are awarded a Perivoli Certificate in a special graduation ceremony.

James said: “I have visited over a hundred schools across the countries where we work and always find it uplifting to see how thirsty the children are for stimulation and activity. This programme answers their call.

“The only cost we bear is the amounts we pay to the Trainers. In effect, assuming there are thirty children per classroom, this works out at about £3 per child per annum. Given the very positive impact on children’s lives, this is money very well spent.”

The Perivoli Schools Trust works closely with local Ministries of Education to champion the power of early years education, which is underfunded in Africa. The Government of Namibia currently spends USD 1000 per child at primary and secondary level, but only USD 20 at nursery school level.

The programme is funded by a separate Trust called Perivoli Innovations that James established in 2016 to invest in early-stage high-risk technology businesses in the UK and Africa, which have a positive societal impact.

“These countries simply don’t have the resources or the reach, so we are filling in an important gap,” says James.

“But it’s a race against time. We have to hope that with better education, people in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa will make wiser life choices, husband resources more carefully, pick better leaders and crucially attract more investment into more value-adding activities to drive up productivity which is, after all, the driver of standards of living and, up to a certain level of income, happiness.”

James returned to the UK earlier this year – before the Omicron variant of Coronavirus was first detected.