Scott Thomas in her \u2018gran cave\u2019. Photograph: John Lewis\/PA<\/p>\n
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 \u201cgran cave\u201d to hang out with her grandchildren, Freddie and Maggie.<\/p>\n
Rosie Hanley, the marketing director of John Lewis, said the retailer had increased its spend on this year\u2019s festive ad as the cost of production had risen and it wanted to \u201cpush the boat out\u201d for its 20th year.<\/p>\n
However, she said the company was confident it would see \u201ca really strong return on our investment\u201d as it tries to grab shoppers\u2019 attention before the Black Friday discount period later this month.<\/p>\n
She said the company had wanted the ad \u201cto be more joyful\u201d this year because \u201cthings are tough for lots of families\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n
The ad, set to a Sam Fender version of the Rolling Stones song You Can\u2019t Always Get What You Want, features a range of John Lewis products in different price brackets, including the \u00a312.99 Fisher-Price pull-along toy dog and a \u00a3255 Weekend Max Mara top and matching \u00a3290 skirt worn by Gloria.<\/p>\n
Pickles the dog is based on Fisher-Price\u2019s classic pull-along toy Little Snoopy. Photograph: John Lewis\/PA<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Coronation Street and Channel 4\u2019s The Great British Bake Off on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
John Lewis will also erect a giant Christmas tree outside its store on London\u2019s Oxford Street to mark the recent pedestrianisation of the road<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Scott Thomas\u2019s character hands out gifts to her family. Photograph: John Lewis\/PA<\/p>\n This year\u2019s ad, created by the Saatchi & Saatchi agency, returns to a formula of using a cute character \u2013 such as Monty the penguin in 2014 and Buster the boxer<\/a> in 2016 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n John Lewis said the ad was inspired by research showing that 52% of grandparents give cash as presents because they don\u2019t know what to buy. Photograph: John Lewis\/PA<\/p>\n 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. \u201cPeople want to give thoughtful gifts but can often lack confidence, so resort to giving cash,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Previous<\/a> 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\u2019s ad<\/a> included the 1990s club classic Where Love Lives by Alison Limerick.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u00a314bn, 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%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Lewis has turned to a celebrity best known for playing aristocrats to put a playful but rather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-665141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1793671450_967_500.jpg\")
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