OPINION: Josh Bryer, creative director, Enigma Agency: No, the Elton John idea isn’t just “a TV ad”

By Josh Bryer

I don’t know about you but I’m getting pretty tired of certain Televangelists proclaiming digital to be an overhyped channel.

And it’s even more tedious when they use arguments like, well this year’s biggest and best and most popular Christmas idea is “a TV ad”.

Anyone who thinks the John Lewis Elton John idea’s makers intended their piece of film to just stay in its box, is deluded.

TV ads will always be loved for their big-screen beauty and reach, but smart advertisers ignore digital’s added benefits at their peril.

Which is why, being the smart advertisers they are, John Lewis considered the full media mix upfront and did two very clever things:

1. They started on social: the campaign was unveiled by John Lewis employees, and John Lewis itself – across their collective social channels, many hours before it went to air on ITV.

2. They sent their beautiful film to every media outlet under the sun, in the full knowledge that it would also be posted online – in social feeds.

It’s here, in the “overhyped” digital space (where you are reading this article), that the film is being seen by far more eyeballs, all over the world, than any limited TV release in the UK would have garnered.

And it’s here that people are commenting on the film and talking to each other about it. Because you don’t see hundreds of people gathering around a TV set to have a conversation about a great Christmas idea.

So by all means, call it this year’s biggest and best and most popular, because it is – and it’s great. (Cannes Titanium level great.)

But don’t call it “a TV ad”. That’s just embarrassing.

Josh Bryer is creative director at Enigma Agency, Sydney.

And just in case you haven’t seen the John Lewis Elton John Christmas ad in one of the scores of digital places it has appeared, here is the ad and its story in this one [ed]: