It doesn’t seem right for John Lewis to release one of its adverts in the summer. I was under the impression that there was a ceasefire during the non-Christmas period, allowing time for Red Cross volunteers to treat victims suffering an overdose of mediocre covers of Britpop hits by breathy female vocalists. But the newly rebranded John Lewis & Partners broke the truce on Tuesday, and detonated a truly awful advertisement during Bake Off.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s a harrowing tale about a psychopathic mullet-haired primary school drama teacher who, after years of sub-par recitals, finally loses it and pressgangs his pupils into staging his nonsensical musical, a tedious We Will Rock You fanfiction set on Mars, apparently. The children are forced to sing a poorly edited version of Bohemian Rhapsody, with verses and stanzas hacked to fit the two-and-a-half-minute runtime (but don’t worry, it feels much, much longer), with different ill-fitting lyrics thrown in at random (“Mama, just killed a Martian” is a particularly egregious one). At the end, it descends into screaming as the children dodge surely illegal pyrotechnics in their worryingly flammable costumes, all while the teacher watches on, a sadistic grin on his face, his mullet bobbing ominously in silent laughter. I haven’t seen the extended cut, but we can assume that it ends with a 10-hour hostage situation where the teacher is eventually killed by police to a breathy female cover version of Don’t Stop Me Now.
If you’re anything like me, the question you have at the end of this multimillion-pound commercial is “Why?” We’re given an answer of sorts by the slogan at the end: “If you’re part of it, you put your heart into it.” It’s one of those trite phrases that you can imagine Iain Dowie saying in a lull during a mediocre World Cup group match on ITV, along with “it’s the size of the fight in the dog” and “Iran are still in this, Sam”.
The idea, I guess, is that the kids were so invested in this weird Queen opera that their unstable teacher made them perform that they put their heart into hand-making the costumes and sets. The problem is that the advert feels too slick for all that – this primary school play clearly has the budget of a mid-level West End production. We have to assume that all other classes have been cancelled, that the children have spent the entire term constructing these cardboard sets and costumes and that subsequently they will all fail their Sats. When a girl playing the drums rose out of a crater via a hidden door in the stage, I stood up and shouted: “What level of reality are we existing on here? Is this the real life? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?” (I was asked to leave the room by my wife.)
The point is, it doesn’t feel homemade: it feels like a multimillion-pound ad agency masquerading as homemade, which means there’s a big gaping hole where the heart should be. In a way, the slogan should have been “John Lewis: we spent too much money on this when actually a cheaper version would have been better”. Which actually would have been quite appropriate for John Lewis.
It turns out the reason for this expensive Christmas-in-September splurge on children with Freddie Mercury moustaches is to rebrand John Lewis and Waitrose: they’ve both added “& Partners” to their name in an effort to emphasise the fact that the company is owned by its employees. Ostensibly there’s nothing wrong with that. I can understand the John Lewis Partnership wanting to push the genuinely unique relationship it has with its employees and its customers – anything that separates it from its heartless online competitors makes sense. But there’s something a bit unsettling about John Lewis trying to play up the angle of a socially conscious outfit, in contrast to those flashy companies wasting millions of pounds on overly slick adverts – by … wasting millions of pounds on an overly slick advert.
What really sticks in the throat, however, is the news that came out this week, that John Lewis is axing up to 270 jobs in its department stores, leaving many of those partners that the company cares so much about suddenly unemployed. It leaves the whole campaign feeling like a hollow self-parody – they’ve spent so much money on a saccharine short film to show how much they love their employees that they’ve had to fire those employees to find money in the budget. It’s practically an Alanis Morissette lyric.
Ultimately, it’s just an advert, and one that I have clearly over-analysed. But there’s something quite cold about it all. If John Lewis actually wants to change as a company – or at least change perceptions – it needs to start treating its partners with respect. It can’t just rework its image to look better – it needs to actually be better. Otherwise it’ll just seem like, to it, nothing really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters, to its PLC.
• Jack Bernhardt is a comedy writer
