In reply to Punter S Thompson:
The whole business of advertising is sort of sickening, true enough. The business of quite a lot of business is sort of sickening come to think of it.
I don't think the purpose of this ad is to sell more stuff though. If it is, I don't doubt it'll prove to be absolutely useless, as many of the most memorable ads ever made have been. It may be meant to generate some warm and fuzzy feelings regarding the brand, though to be honest I suspect many folk having seen it won't even remember which supermarket's name appeared briefly at the end.
If I had to attribute a cynical motive to it's creation, and yes *of course* there will have been at least some cynical motivation behind it, I think the people who made it really intended it to do only one thing: upstage John Lewis. They've undoubtedly achieved that.
(Actually, that isn't true: I think the people who
commissioned it intended that. I suspect the people who actually made it are creative types who rather wish they'd made Christian Camion's 'Joyeux Noel'.)
Like a small random act of kindness though, I think it's net effect will be to make people infinitesimally nicer for a short while. It's a little necessary good committed by 'Satan's little helpers and the ruiners of all things good' for the benefit of the greater evil.