In the UK, Christmas ads are a huge part of creating the festive spirit. Every year, people take to Twitter to comment on the campaigns of major brands, John Lewis especially. And that’s not all: Twitter is a space where people talk all things Christmas. So, we decided to tell the world that Christmas is on Twitter, and therefore brands should be too. How? By creating a campaign that started and ended with one very special user, and a tweet he published in November 2020.

Every year, many people look forward to the John Lewis Christmas advert. It’s a big deal, and lots of people get involved on Twitter.

In November 2020, Twitter user @DanannMcaleer tweeted saying that at age seven he wrote the perfect John Lewis Christmas ad. He posted his story, complete with illustrations, and invited John Lewis to use it for their 2021 campaign. John Lewis didn't take him up on the offer. But we did. We made his tale into an incredible, surreal animation.

To show that the Christmas conversation is on Twitter, and prove to brands that on our platform users engage with the Christmas content put out by brands, we decided to create a campaign that started with a tweet from a user back in November 2020, in which he offers up his own story to John Lewis for their festive ad. By rooting our campaign in existing content and launching the campaign on the platform itself too, in a single tweet, we could communicate to brands that it’s all happening on Twitter.

Based on his original drawing, we recreated the fantastic world that existed in Danann’s seven-year-old imagination. The result? A Christmas film that brought to life the Twitter Christmas spirit and showed off our users in our special way.

To create a childish, modern style, the illustrator and director Roxane Campoy used traditional techniques, namely hand-drawing and painting with gouache, as well as a vivid colour palette straight from a child’s imagination, that matched Twitter’s branding too. We also introduced Danann’s original handwriting for even more childlike magic.

The campaign was launched in a single Tweet, that got people talking on the platform. Even John Lewis got involved in the conversation, responding to our tweet. Beyond the film itself, fans competed to win items from our special line of merchandise on social media, creating even more buzz around James and Jack.