Celtic supporters believe they may have worked out why there has been no traditional Christmas advert from the club this year, and it is not down to the Celtic Fan Collective’s “Not Another Penny” campaign urging fans to withhold spending on official merchandise.
Instead, the prevailing theory among supporters centres on Brendan Rodgers’ abrupt exit.
A Christmas advert of that scale would almost certainly have been storyboarded, filmed, and edited well in advance. Rodgers’ resignation was announced at the end of October. By the time the club reached the point where the advert would normally be released, it may simply have been unusable.
(Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)
What Celtic have put out instead has been powerful in its own right. The club has focused on real stories around hardship and mental wellbeing, shining a light on the Paradise Pit Stop and the Celtic Foundation’s Christmas work. That content has been warmly received and rightly so. It reflects values that go far beyond selling scarves and jumpers.
However, the picture became clearer this week when the club released Christmas jumper photos featuring players in branded merchandise, holding action signs.
To many fans, it felt like a fragment of something bigger. Almost as if that shoot was the only salvageable element of a wider campaign that never saw the light of day.
If that is the case, there is a certain irony in it. A polished, commercial Christmas advert quietly shelved, replaced by more grounded and human storytelling that arguably landed with greater impact anyway.
Fans flocked to the social media post, believing they had cracked the case.
Whether raw footage from the original campaign ever exists, or will ever be revealed, is another matter entirely. But the absence of a Christmas advert this year looks less like a reaction to the protests and more like collateral damage from a chaotic Brendan Rodgers exit.
Here was last year’s Christmas ad. Read More.
