Wallace and Gromit Bring Barbour Christmas Cheer – and Consistency

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Barbour’s excellent record with Christmas ads continues – after two years of Shaun The Sheep Christmas commercials, they’ve returned in a collab with Aardman’s other superstars, Wallace And Gromit. The key to Barbour’s success has been the alignment of its very British fashion and outerwear brand with another great British tradition of loveable cartoon characters. It means the brand can be patriotic by association while it tells its festive stories.

And what stories they are! Aardman Animation has been connected with advertising since the very beginning: the classic “Creature Comforts” ads for British Gas helped introduce the world to their unique and loveable clay-based animation. The character and expressiveness they bring from their clay is something magical, and they’ve been working closely with brands ever since.

Andrew Tindall and Beth Marchant’s book Putting On A Show, published this year by System1, looks at 96 of Aardman’s campaigns over the last forty years. It’s a remarkable study of just how good the brand are at consistently creating memorable, emotional, and most of all effective campaigns. For ads featuring Aardman’s iconic characters, like Wallace And Gromit, the average score is over 5-Stars on our Test Your Ad platform.

In other words, if you use Aardman’s classic characters in your ad, the chances are you’ll end up in the top 1% of all UK ads for long term business impact.

Has the magic worked again for Barbour? It certainly has. The new ad is 90 minutes of wonderful Wallace And Gromit action in the style viewers love – Wallace’s gadgets leading to farcical fun. This time he’s automated Christmas with a machine that wraps, gives and unwraps gifts (decorated in an exclusive Barbour pattern, of course). In typical Wallace fashion, the “Gift-O-Matic” does its job rather too well, unwrapping its own inventor and leaving him in his underwear in front of some shocked carol singers. Fortunately, he’s wearing his gift from Gromit – a Barbour scarf – to save his modesty.

What Aardman bring to ads isn’t just the great characters, it’s a level of storytelling craft that’s seen them create box office smashes and win dozens of awards. This Barbour ad is no exception. Every moment has something funny or charming happening, and by the end of its 90 seconds you really feel you’ve watched a full story.

The ad scores an exceptional 5.8-Stars on Test Your Ad, putting it into the top bracket of Christmas ads this year as well as joining the many other Aardman 5-Star spots. Barbour are a brand whose main advertising presence is around Christmas time, as they make high-end products ideal for gifting. An exceptional Star Rating means this ad will help drive long-term effectiveness for them, building on previous 5-Star Christmas ads to create business growth for years to come.

What can other brands learn from this? “Working with Aardman pays off” is one obvious lesson, but even beyond that the success of Barbour and Aardman’s ads is about the benefit of a long-term, consistent creative strategy. Great British characters and a Great British brand have turned into an enduring campaign that punches above the brand’s weight every Christmas.