Harvey Nichols | Sorry I Spent It On Myself | 2013
Turning the Spirit of Christmas on Its Head Made This Ad a Legend / Harvey Nichols "Sorry I Spent It On Myself"
At Christmas 2013, the upscale department store Harvey Nichols came right out and said, "Sorry, I spent it on myself." It was an ad that threw the whole idea of Christmas being a season of sharing straight out the window.
The problem
For British department stores, the Christmas shopping season is the main event that shapes the year's sales. While John Lewis and other retailers poured huge budgets into tear-jerking, heartwarming campaigns, Harvey Nichols was the only one that ran the opposite direction.
The insight
In a season when everyone glorifies giving, they dared to declare that it's okay to spoil yourself. Even the judges at Cannes were struck by "the sheer nerve of doing this during the season when retailers make the most money." Turning greed into something funny is actually incredibly hard to pull off.
The idea
Rubber bands, paper clips, a bag of gravel, a canned lunch with no sides — under the slogan "Something small for them, something big for you," they actually turned these pathetic gifts into real products. The ads showed lavishly dressed gift-givers handing them over to families who received them with wonderfully awkward expressions. The acting that captured that awkward tension was just brilliant.
What happened
The underwhelming gifts shown in the videos were genuinely sold in stores, and they sold out in less than three days. The hashtag trended on Twitter, and the campaign, created by adam&eveDDB, won four Grand Prix awards at Cannes.
Afterthought
They didn't stop at a concept video — they actually made the products and sold out of them. That fact alone became news in itself. Hats off to the sheer nerve it took to pull off, with total confidence, the one move nobody else dared make in the sacred territory of Christmas.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix
