For anyone who hasn’t seen John Lewis’s most recent piece of advertising, shame on you. The song alone, a haunting rendition of Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman as interpreted by Fyfe Dangerfield of The Guillemots fame, is enough to tip even the most emotionally detached of consumers over the proverbial precipice. Instantly engaging, touchingly provocative and unpretentiously sentimental, the 90 second short from young comms agency Adam & Eve charts the life of the average British woman through 70 years of emotionally charged vignettes as she experiences her first day at school, her 18th birthday, her wedding and so on…
As the lyrics wrap themselves effortlessly around the seamlessly executed journey of the protagonist’s life, the post Lehman significance of the brand’s promise of a ‘lifelong commitment to you’ becomes increasingly clear; life is too short, let John Lewis look after you. And it is here that the beauty of the campaign lies. Refusing to fall into the trap of aggressively positioning themselves as the British high street’s favourite store, their ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ strap-line is subtly reassuring at a time when brand loyalty is at an all time low. In watching the seven different actresses at each stage of a believably ‘real’ woman’s life, you realise that all these babies/girls/women exist simultaneously now across the globe. And that somehow they’ll all be ok.
