THIS year’s John Lewis Christmas ad will be seen on telly for the first time tonight — and we’ve got a sneak preview.
The clip features a young girl called Lily, who looks at the moon through a telescope and sees an old man living there.
The £7million ad, titled Man on the Moon, launches on John Lewis’s social media channels today and airs during the first break in Gogglebox on Channel 4, which starts at 9pm.
The 120-second ad is set to a cover of Oasis track Half the World Away, the original version of which was the theme song to BBC comedy The Royle Family.
Written by Noel Gallagher and performed by little-known Norwegian female singer Aurora, it provides the soundtrack as Lily gets increasingly frustrated at not being able to make contact with the man.
But on Christmas morning she sends him his own telescope so he can see her waving at him. It reduces him — and no doubt the millions who will see it — to tears, before ending with the line: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas.”
Hoping to build on the success of last year’s Monty the Penguin story, the retailer has teamed up with the Age UK charity to raise awareness of the loneliness some old people feel during the festive season.
Craig Inglis, customer director at John Lewis, says he hopes the advert “inspires people to find really special gifts for their loved ones” and “encourages others to support in any way they can”.
— See it at
1. Lily is ignored by her older brother, who is busy playing computer games
2. So Lily, who loves anything related to space, goes to her telescope and looks up to the sky
3. She scans the night sky and settles on looking at the moon, where she sees a flash of light — she looks intrigued
4. She zooms in and spots a man in a ramshackle hut — she can’t believe what she has seen
5. Lily waves to get his attention but he just looks into middle distance, making her feel dejected
6. Lily rushes home from school on a scooter so she can try to find the man on the moon again
7. She finds him once more, this time as he walks from his hut to his bench
8. Lily is so obsessed she has to eat her dinner while looking through her telescope
9. The man continues to look longingly at Earth — he knows Christmas is coming, which makes him feel even more lonely
10. A shot reveals the distance from the moon to the Earth, showing how lonely old people can get
11. Lily passes a building site with a ladder that appears to be going up to the moon, which gives her an idea
12. She writes him a letter and tries to get it to him, firstly by climbing a ladder and reaching as high as she can
13. She writes another note and tries to fire it to him with a makeshift bow and arrow
14. Finally, Lily throws a paper aeroplane message from her attic window
15. But the Man on the Moon is sat on his bench still looking lonely — Lily hasn’t managed to reach him
16. Lily’s dad puts up the Christmas tree in front of telescope — Lily seems to have forgotten about the Man on the Moon
17. But she hasn’t … a package carried by balloons lands at his feet — he opens it and finds a telescope to look at Earth
18. He sees the rush of Christmas in different towns, with people playing in the snow
19. Then he sees Lily waving — their eyes connect through the telescope and you see a tear in his eye. He waves back
20. He stands on the moon and waves. The tagline reads: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas.”
Star Wars to retail wars
THE special effects guru behind the advert is no stranger to bringing other worlds to life — he’s just been to a galaxy far, far away.
Ben Hall was part of the team on Matt Damon flick The Martian and 2012’s Prometheus.
After shooting the John Lewis advert he started work on the new Star Wars film Episode VII: The Force Awakens, out next month.
Early scripts for the ad were written in January by John Lewis’s ad agency adam&eve, which has made seven of the retailer’s nine festive adverts.
The best were reviewed a month later and in April store bosses gave Man on the Moon lift-off.
But that was just the start of it. The following week, director Kim Gehrig, who has done ads for Ikea, Honda and Sport England, was signed.
During May and June auditions for the two main parts took place. Kim and the team saw more than 100 girls from across the UK before finding Lily, who is played by six-year-old Orli, from North London.
The Man on the Moon is Jean, a 77-year-old from Paris.
Rachel Swift, John Lewis’s brand marketing boss, told The Sun: “We needed him to look magical but also show a range of emotions from sadness to utter joy. Jean did that to perfection.”
The moon set took 35 people three weeks to build. After being shot in August, the ad was edited in September and October, cutting down hours of footage to two minutes.