The UK’s Best Christmas Ads 2017, Ranked By Data

Christmas is officially here, or so the TV would have you think. We’ve traced social media mentions of the major Christmas ads 2017 as they were released to see which were best received.

The Brandwatch React team have kept a close eye on ads being released over the last few weeks, setting up queries for each as they came out and monitoring the associated keywords and hashtags.

Our Christmas ads 2017 data has already been published in PR Week, The Drum and Marketing Week (and more) so far, so check out the data the journalists have been fighting for.

While you might have predicted the impact of one certain advert that we’ve mentioned before, the other results may surprise you.

The ads making a splash

John Lewis, almost inevitably, had the highest number of public social media mentions with #MoztheMonster. The retail giant has set the bar high for a number of years and few UK brands are able to generate half the amount of hype around their own adverts.

If you’re going to beat John Lewis on hype, you’ve really got to do something special.

M&S’s Paddington Bear campaign came next along with Tesco’s #EveryonesWelcome.

Social’s favourite Christmas ads 2017:

But big mentions don’t always mean that people are talking positively about your ad.

We used sentiment analysis to take a assess the success of our Christmas ads, removing retweets to find the ads generating the most positive mentions that weren’t retweeting promotions or the ad itself.

While many claim the John Lewis ad isn’t as good as last year’s, it still clinched the top spot.

M&S, with lovable Paddington, came in second and Debenhams with the #YouShall love story comes in at third.

If you’ve not seen it yet, here’s the winning ad:

Here it is, our 2017 Christmas ad #MozTheMonster pic.twitter.com/c7qPyD9ICE

— John Lewis & Partners (@jlandpartners) November 10, 2017