Short and Sweet: Lidl Christmas Ad Shows Edits Are Worth It

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Lidl’s Christmas ad this year is a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of Christmas, as a little girl wonders what makes it so special, and what the rest of the year could learn from the festive season. We tested the Ad, from Droga5, in Lidl’s home market Germany and discovered that it’s also an example of how a strong short edit can really make an ad shine.

In the full length ad, the girl explores her home town, does some Christmas shopping, and arrives home for a family feast while musing on what Christmas really means. The 20-second edit we put into Test Your Ad Pro keeps the most important scenes – the girl at the Christmas market, watching Dad hang up the Christmas lights, and enjoying the big Christmas dinner – and distills her monologue to a short, sweet message. Christmas is special because everyone makes an effort to make things nicer for one another – and wouldn’t it be nice if we did that all year round? “Every day would be worth it”, the ad ends, a reference to Lidl’s German slogan “Lidl lohnt sich” (Lidl is worth it)

It’s an ad with a strong emphasis on family and kindness, and that resonates with viewers. When you look at the “Key Associations” page of the Test Your Ad Pro report, the second and third strongest associations are family-based, and both are very positive. We know from the work of Orlando Wood in his book Look Out that “between-ness” – showing human connection and communication, even unspoken – is a powerful motor for gaining audience attention in ads and that it leads to greater emotional connection. Lidl’s ad uses this very well.

Our Test Your Ad Pro platform gives a 4.7 to Lidl’s ad, a result which puts it in the top 2% of German TV commercials. Christmas is always a great time for emotional advertising, and this is an excellent performance for a more thoughtful Christmas ad than usual. It also gets a Strong score on Brand Fluency, which measures the speed and accuracy of recognition for an ad.

Lidl’s strong performance at 20 seconds shows the value of making an ad which can be adapted to shorter lengths and different platforms (like short-form vertical video). Most Christmas ads nowadays take a narrative approach, which can really pay emotional dividends at full length but is also difficult to cut down effectively and keep all the storytelling effectiveness. What Lidl have done is emphasise the meaning in the ad instead, with a montage of scenes which can be shuffled to create shorter versions. The central message stays the same, and the ad loses none of its emotional impact – while being a lot more efficient in terms of media spend!