Paul Burke says Tesco’s Christmas ad wastes its stars on lazy celebrity casting

Advertising copywriter and director Paul Burke has criticised Tesco’s UK Christmas ad, arguing that it squanders two highly regarded actors on casting chosen for fame rather than fit.

Burke, founder of Paul Burke Creative and Paul Burke Radio, says that while John Lewis’s festive campaign has attracted most of the attention this year, Tesco’s is the one that concerns him more.

Both retailers have built their ads around well-known performers. John Lewis has split opinion by casting Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, though audience testing suggests most viewers liked the ad, and the retailer has gone down this route before, with Sir Elton John fronting its 2018 Christmas commercial.

Familiar faces

Burke argues that Tesco’s ad, ‘The Wrong Address’, is a worse case of an agency picking actors simply because people know them. It stars Roisin Conaty and Anna Maxwell Martin, both, he says, among the best-known actors on British TV and already in danger of being overexposed.

Because audiences have seen both so often in other roles, he says, it is hard to accept them as the characters they are playing, and harder still to accept whatever message Tesco wants to get across. In his view, the casting undermines what could otherwise have been a perfectly decent commercial.

He suggests hundreds of less recognisable actors could have brought more authenticity to the parts, so viewers might accept one as a delivery driver for the supermarket and the other as a distressed customer. “Instead, we see two famous people playing dress-up,” he writes.

Burke calls it lazy casting, but argues the problem goes further, showing that neither the agency nor the client was curious enough, or confident the work could succeed without well-known names. He believes the opposite is true.

He says the industry was once much bolder in its casting, and cites actors he hired before they became household names, including Daniel Craig, James Corden, Olivia Colman, Rosamund Pike, Hugh Grant, Hugh Dennis and Hugh Bonneville. The pleasure, he says, lay in spotting talent that would take them well beyond a VW radio commercial. “All it’s done is write a big, fat check,” he writes of Tesco.

The Irish alternative

Burke contrasts the UK ad with Tesco Ireland’s Christmas campaign, ‘Helping Christmas Feel Magic’, created by BBH Dublin, in which a little boy becomes sure that a helpful Tesco employee is one of Santa’s elves. He calls it sentimental but charming, and says it lets the central relationship carry the emotion without relying on performers viewers already know well.

He is also unimpressed by the line from Suzanne Quinn, Tesco’s UK customer director, who said: “This Christmas, Tesco is showing up with plenty of extra little helps to deliver customers their very best Christmas.”

Burke notes that the “extra little helps” shown in the UK ad have drawn anger and mockery from some Tesco delivery drivers. Ringing a customer from a personal mobile, dropping an order somewhere other than the address given and offering a shopper a ride in the van are reportedly serious breaches that could cost a driver their job, and some workers have described the ad as a guide to what not to do.

Tesco has said the story takes some creative licence and that the safety of customers and colleagues remains a priority. Burke says he is happy to accept that, but not the casting.

He adds that he is a fan of both actors, which is why he does not want to see the ad again, and suggests heavy airplay in the run-up to Christmas could leave audiences, and possibly casting directors, tired of seeing them.