Waitrose’s Cozy Christmas Rom-Com Gets Top Scores

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Waitrose’s Christmas ad is a festive commercial with a difference. It’s less an ad, more a mini-movie, clocking in at a hefty four minutes. That kind of length is usually the kiss of death for keeping audiences interested, but “The Perfect Gift”, by agency Wonderhood, turns out to be captivating for our Test Your Ad viewers. So captivating, in fact, that it’s seen off all comers to become our top scoring supermarket Christmas ad of 2025, getting a maximum 5.9-Stars on Test Your Ad Pro.

How did an ad this long do this well? The length obviously hasn’t hurt Waitrose, but it’s not the key driver of why people love the ad since a one minute version scores almost as high. The magic is in the storyline, the casting and the romantic vibe, which make “The Perfect Gift” a real departure from most Christmas commercials.

If you haven’t seen it, the ad stars Keira Knightley (playing herself) and comedian and Celebrity Traitors star Joe Wilkinson as Phil, a gentle and slightly gormless giant who meets her at the Waitrose cheese counter. The two strike up an unlikely but heartwarming romance, to the shock of Phil’s friends but the delight of the viewer. Every rom-com needs a rocky patch, though, and this one comes when Phil finds a gift he thinks is from a love rival. He’s wrong, but it spurs him on to win her back by baking a special turkey pie, all thanks to Waitrose Food.

Why is Waitrose and Wonderhood’s ad so special? Orlando Wood, in his book Look Out, talks about how great ads often revolve around what he calls C-I-P – Character, Incident and Place. The ad wouldn’t work nearly so well without Wilkinson’s performance as Phil, who’s goofy but obviously a sweet, lovable guy, so we’re rooting for him all through his dream romance. So it has loads of Character, and the length allows for plenty of Incident. In fact the extra time means the film can really dwell on moments like the cheese counter meet-cute. As for Place, from the pub to Phil’s flat to Keira Knightley’s house, it’s set in a Christmassy version of modern Britain that feels cosy but real. It’s no wonder the ad got praise from no less a rom-com expert than Love, Actually’s Richard Curtis.

But Richard Curtis’ view isn’t the one that matters to us. That honour goes to the ordinary people in our Test Your Ad panel, who gave it the maximum possible 5.9-Score. Test Your Ad Pro comes with a range of diagnostic metrics as well as the score, so we can see that the most popular viewer comments were ones like “it was just lovely” and “Lovely romantic story, gorgeous food”. We can also check the Types of Happiness the audience felt, with “amused” and “uplifted” coming out on top.

“The Perfect Gift” isn’t just a long-term winner. The variety and intensity of emotion the ad conjures up also means it’s a very intense commercial, and that means it also gets a massive Spike Rating (predicting short-term sales) – one of the highest we’ve seen this year. And its Brand Fluency was very strong, with 94% of viewers realising it was for Waitrose.

“The Perfect Gift” beautifully shows how to do a storytelling ad. It combines the glamour of celebrity with comedy, romance and a wonderful Christmassy feel – with a big role for the brand too. Waitrose has always made quality Christmas ads, but they’ve levelled up this year and deserve their place high up on the System1 tree.