Creative Corner at Christmas: Barbour & Wallace & Gromit, Lego and Shelter

Barbour & Wallace & Gromit wrap Christmas in tartan

Hot off the press is Barbour’s Christmas ad, teaming up with Aardman Animations once again to bring the beloved Wallace & Gromit back after a stint of teaming up with Shaun the Sheep, for a tartan-wrapped robot adventure. This is the kind of nostalgic, handcrafted magic fun I await each year. 

The stop‑motion piece, produced at Aardman’s Bristol studio, is oozing with the warmth, texture and charm that Coca Cola’s AI-morphing truck can only dream of.

Barbour has built well-deserved anticipation around consistent delivery of timeless charm and heritage each Christmas, with past collaborations having hero‑ed the likes of Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas. Here, it continues to speak directly to its audience with long‑standing family icons whilst showcasing itself as a custodian of classic British festive culture, creating a distinctive signature for its Christmas campaigns.

The spot opens in Wallace & Gromit’s home, where Wallace unveils his latest invention, the Gift‑o‑matic, wrapped in Barbour’s Winterberry tartan. Gifts are wrapped and unwrapped, and then hilariously things go awry: the machine unwraps Wallace down to his undies, leaving only a Barbour scarf to cover him. The campaign also ties into Barbour’s Re‑Loved initiative, with a limited run of up‑cycled jackets inspired by Wallace & Gromit (naturally with tartan patches) and proceeds going to Oxfam.

It may follow a well-trodden path, but it’s precisely that which makes it feel like a hug.

LEGO brings families together with an unlikely choir

With its own take on nostalgia, Lego has entered the festive soundtrack wars. While most Christmas ads are busy employing famous-pop-banger-of-yesteryear or breathy-cover-of-emotional-semi-recent-chart-topper, The Lego Group has gone for something far more literal and charming. Enter: The Lego Holiday Choir, a troupe of minifigures belting out Lionel Richie’s Hello in their own style.

Following a boy who has forgotten the joy of imagination, the film kicks off with his little sister doing the honourable thing and prompting him to have a little fun by playing with Lego bricks - ultimately bringing to life a wonderfully ragtag choir of Lego characters (StarWars, Friends, Wicked and more) who sing Richie’s 1984 powerballad in a host of distinctive voices.

Like Barbour’s stop-motion offering, this ad showcases the honed craft of a talented team of hands-on creatives, this time led by animation studio beEpic, alongside five builders who used almost 100k bricks to construct the main stage.

Hello, Is It Play You’re Looking For? celebrates the brand’s DNA: imagination, play and togetherness. Ultimately, though, it’s also about the buzz of toys on Christmas Day. And there’s no shame in that.

Shelter’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” finds power in the quiet

Every year one Christmas ad cuts through the sparkle to offer a more sobering insight into the stark reality for many families. This time it’s Shelter, with Don’t Panic delivering a quietly devastating twist on a surprising soundtrack of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) and choreographed by Ashley Wallen, the film follows a young boy singing the Bonnie Tyler classic throughout his school day, with varying confidence and joyful moments, culminating in a triumphant knee slide in the loos. There’s no synth-y, power ballad track or glittering production, though; with relative silence and singing alone, the school scenes feel strangely suspended, a quiet unease lurking beneath the singing.

The gut punch arrives when he arrives home to a glassy-eyed mum on hold to the same song, waiting on the phone for help with temporary accommodation.

Every decision—from the musical restraint, the organic, unpolished dancing, and the involvement of people with lived experience to inform the scripting around the fallout of a burdened system —contributes to what is an incredibly sobering flash of the reality of the ongoing housing crisis.