John Lewis Christmas ad stars Kristin Scott Thomas as glamorous granny on a gift hunt

Company tugs at heartstrings with Pickles the talking toy dog as it celebrates 20 years of blockbuster festive ads

John Lewis has turned to a celebrity best known for playing aristocrats to put a playful but rather upmarket spin on the countdown to Christmas with this year’s festive ad, which features a toy dog called Pickles and a glamorous granny.

Kristin Scott Thomas, known for playing upper-crust characters in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and the Apple TV show Slow Horses, is cast as Gloria, a grandmother searching for gift inspiration, with the tagline “don’t give up on giving”.

In the 20th version of its blockbuster Christmas ad, the department store kickstarts the official countdown to Christmas by tugging at the heartstrings, with Pickles, voiced by the comedian Paul Whitehouse, challenging Gloria to “do better than cash” when choosing a gift for her grandchildren.

Pickles drags Gloria out of the house on a last-minute mission to find gifts, and after rejecting options in other shops, she sets off on a magical tuk-tuk ride to John Lewis, where she snaps up some disco balls and fairy lights to create a “gran cave” to hang out with her grandchildren, Freddie and Maggie.

Rosie Hanley, the marketing director of John Lewis, said the retailer had increased its spend on this year’s festive ad as the cost of production had risen and it wanted to “push the boat out” for its 20th year.

However, she said the company was confident it would see “a really strong return on our investment” as it tries to grab shoppers’ attention before the Black Friday discount period later this month.

She said the company had wanted the ad “to be more joyful” this year because “things are tough for lots of families”. Despite concerns among British households about higher energy bills and housing costs, Hanley said spending on Christmas-related gear at John Lewis was already up on last year.

The ad, set to a Sam Fender version of the Rolling Stones song You Can’t Always Get What You Want, features a range of John Lewis products in different price brackets, including the £12.99 Fisher-Price pull-along toy dog and a £255 Weekend Max Mara top and matching £290 skirt worn by Gloria.

The three-minute ad will launch on social media on Tuesday morning, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, before a 60-second version airs for the first time on TV in the ad breaks for ITV’s Coronation Street and Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off on Tuesday evening.

John Lewis will also erect a giant Christmas tree outside its store on London’s Oxford Street to mark the recent pedestrianisation of the road. The company said the numbers of visitors to its store on the street last week were up by more than a fifth on the same week last year.

This year’s ad, created by the Saatchi & Saatchi agency, returns to a formula of using a cute character – such as Monty the penguin in 2014 and Buster the boxer in 2016 – after two years foregrounding other family relationships. However, it has the twist of focusing on the relationship between Pickles and a grandmother rather than centring on cute children.

Hanley said the ad was inspired by research which had revealed that 52% of grandparents give cash as presents because they are not sure what youngsters really want. “People want to give thoughtful gifts but can often lack confidence, so resort to giving cash,” she said.

Now considered a national moment which invites social media comment and skits, the first big-budget John Lewis festive TV ad launched in 2007, soundtracked by a piece of music by Prokofiev.

Previous John Lewis Christmas TV ads have been soundtracked by covers including the Smiths song Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want and Together in Electric Dreams by Giorgio Moroder and Philip Oakey. Last year’s ad included the 1990s club classic Where Love Lives by Alison Limerick.

This year’s track, which features the choir from the John Spence community high school, which Fender previously attended, and the Easington Colliery Band, will be released on vinyl later this month, with proceeds going to Action For Children. Pickles the dog is based on an existing Fisher-Price pull-along toy called Little Snoopy that is celebrating its 60th year.

The John Lewis ad launch comes hot on the heels of other festive ads for most of the big supermarkets that kicked off last weekend. Total ad spending across the festive period is set to reach £14bn, up 8.2% year-on-year according to the annual review by the Advertising Association and research group WARC. That growth is led by an 18.5% year-on-year surge in social media spend, while total TV spending is expected to be up by 1.6%.