John Lewis's worst-reviewed Christmas ad: why it wants to stop cash gift cards
aakashgupta · x · 2026-11-04
John Lewis's 2026 Christmas ad features a talking toy dog telling off a grandma for putting cash in grandkids' cards—and it's flopped, with 5x more dislikes than likes and YouTube comments disabled. The business logic: John Lewis research shows over half of grandparents give cash because they don't know what to buy. With £4.9B in sales but only £58M adjusted operating profit (1.5p per pound) last year, and sales down 2% in H1, cash gifts flow to Amazon or Roblox instead of its tills. The ad tries to redirect that spending to toys, but the message has been widely panned.
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