Creative Corner: Tesco gets real, JD goes unfiltered and Amazon gives five star reviews

Happy Friday, readers. Mid-November and we’re still deep in the throes of the emotionally tear-jerking Christmas campaign launches.

However, put your tissues away and call me Scrooge as I’ve gone all real this week.

Yes, here are three Christmas ads, but each one paints a much more realistic take on life. Step forward, Tesco’s celebration of the real non-picture-perfect Christmas; JD Sports’ phone shot celebration of youth culture and Amazon’s Real Christmas Review.

Tesco celebrates the beautiful chaos of Christmas

The first instalment of keeping it real comes from Tesco, whose dose of Christmas nostalgia hits you firmly on the funny bone as the nation’s biggest supermarket leans into the glorious mess of it all.

Rather than offering a picture-perfect festive fantasy, the campaign celebrates the perfectly imperfect moments that define British Christmases: the chaos, the laughter, the awkward traditions, and the fridge full of random food no one’s allowed to touch just yet.

And in a break from cinematic four-minute tradition, the offering comes in 11 standalone “everything perfectly imperfect is where the real magic is” short films, complete with some typical British dry wit narration from comedian John Bishop.

Each spot feels like a peek into my Christmases past, where every conceivable game, food, and get together is crammed into one chaotic week of burnt offerings, cousins taking the p**s out of each other over a game of Pictionary and didn’t-read-the-memo presents.

It’s a far cry from airbrushed holiday perfection — and that’s the point. Where brands often chase flawless festive ideals, this finds connection through imperfection.

It’s real Christmas and I can’t wait for it to begin.

JD Sports hands the camera to a generation

JD has carved itself a niche in holding up the mirror to real culture at Christmas these past few years, and 2025’s offering, Where Are You Going?, has gone one step further.

The retailer’s festive campaign doesn’t open on snow-dusted shopfronts or staged family dinners. Instead, it opens on a black screen and a challenge: “We wanted to see the future / so we handed 286 young people a phone.”

Shot entirely in portrait, the film is an amalgamation of raw clips and shaky frames that resemble a digital photo album, documenting the everyday life and aspirations of today’s youth and celebrating a generation that refuses to conform.

Each story starts with the same question, ‘Where are you going?’ and each person answers through a voiceover.

It’s a montage of the unfiltered: GCSE results; haircuts; bike rides; club nights; visits to grandparents’ graves. The big and the small are given equal weight, framed with honesty and humour.

In keeping with the authenticity, JD’s brand ambassadors, Jade Thirlwall, Chy Cartier, Nemzz, LeoStayTrill, Skye Newman, appear not as polished celebrities but as people caught in their own moments: Cole Palmer kicks things off by flipping the camera to take a selfie with fans before you see Jade laughing in the studio, Nemzz in the club and Myles Lewis-Skelly hitting serves on a tennis court.

It’s a far cry from cinematic gloss; instead, we get grainy phone footage, cracked screens, and the texture of the everyday. It’s a collage of moments, fast, fleeting, funny, emotional. “You can fail, you can make mistakes… but really, who cares?” says one voiceover.

For years, JD has been building a brand rooted in culture. This Christmas, JD hasn’t just captured youth culture; it’s handed it the mic and stepped back.

Amazon’s ‘Five Star Theater’ Christmas review

The third and final offering of keeping it real comes from the purveyor of packages, Amazon.

For Christmas 2025, the retail giant has revived its Five Star Theater series, this time starring Benedict Cumberbatch, whose velvet-voiced gravitas elevates real, yes, real not AI generated, customer reviews to near-Shakespearean drama.

The setting of Cumberbatch seated in a leather armchair by a roaring fire, a festive tree twinkling in the background, is as seasonally traditional as you’d expect, but that is as far as the Christmas cliches get. Looking every bit the classically trained thespian, he then begins a theatrical journey into the ridiculous with a stirring monologue about a Bissell portable carpet cleaner that heroically conquered a food poisoning disaster.

In another vignette, he recites, with exquisite sincerity, a five-star review for a boyfriend-shaped pillow, lauding its ability to “never snore or fart.”

Shot like a BBC drama it feels like a thespian-laced cross between Jackanory and Ronnie Corbetts (god bless him) armchair monologues as Cumberbatch recites the oddly specific reviews pulled from Amazon’s galaxy of product feedback.

Against a Christmas ad backdrop of emotional sincerity and tear-jerking nostalgia, this stood out to me through its refreshing absurdity. At Christmas even a carpet cleaner can have its five-star moment under the spotlight.

That wraps up another edition of Creative Corner!

As always, if you're working on something that deserves the spotlight, or you've seen a campaign worth sharing, drop us a line: paul.lucas@fanclubpr.com