Jingle bells, compassion sells: the festive advertising battle for our hearts and pounds

Mog's Christmas Calamity's launch came a week after John Lewis's Man On The Moon advertisement had broken records for the number of sharings and viewings of a festive ad. Watch it, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it wasn't a commercial, but a campaign highlighting the loneliness of old people; that it was less about selling and more about an important social issue.

John Lewis's ad features a little girl who looks up at the moon's bright lunar surface with her telescope, and spots a sad, lonely old man there, then sends him a gift ... prompting the realisation that there are times when a well-judged present really can make a difference. “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas,” is the tagline.

Here, it seemed, was an example of caring capitalism. In the same week, we learned that Asda was pulling out of Black Friday – the now-annual pre-festive shopping discount bonanza that last year saw around £810 million in online sales alone. This year's event falls on November 27, but Asda's chief executive has said their customers had told them “loud and clear that they don’t want to be held hostage to a day or two of sales”. Meanwhile, Argos has launched its annual toy exchange campaign on behalf of Barnardo’s.

The UK may be set to spend an estimated £16.5bn on food, drink and gifts this festive season (up 2.5 per cent on 2014). And competition for the £442 each of us is predicted to spend on festive catering and presents may be ferocious. However, increasingly, the seasonal message retailers want to convey is not that they want to sell, but that they care.

This is nothing new. John Lewis has been developing its sophisticated strand of heart-warming adverts for years, but in 2014, Sainsbury's almost outdid the company, pipping it to the post for most viewed advert with its First World War Christmas Truce commercial, which conveyed a potent message of sharing across the divide. This was not about buying, but sharing.

Increasingly what we see around Christmas is a kind of lovewashing – the equivalent of greenwashing (giving products an eco-friendly veneer), but with a social conscience. It plucks at our heartstrings; pulls at our sense of community. That a capitalist Christmas can also be a caring Christmas is the message of these adverts. They are telling us that even if we believe that the spirit of Christmas is about altruism and love, there is space for that too amid the buying frenzy.

Of course, it’s not only at Christmas that brands try to reel us in with messages of love and caring. There are many attempts to demonstrate their sense of corporate social responsibility, or to make good PR out of the more ethical things they do. But at this time of year, the lovewash is turned up to maximum spin.

Not everyone feels comfortable with this. It has become common to moan about the commodification of Christmas and to worry that we are losing what many see as its real “spirit” amidst all the excess. Many of these adverts form part of the cultural dialogue over how we feel about the yearly carnival of gifts. They are answers to our wider questioning of consumerism. Mostly they reassure us that a little present-giving or festive catering is part of love.

But, interestingly, Man On The Moon goes beyond that trend. It has a bigger message, on behalf of its partner charity, Age UK, of reaching out to the old and lonely. Is the ad an act of corporate social responsibility? Is it a very clever way of getting us into the stores this year? Or is it part of a long-term John Lewis strategy of building up an image of itself as a retailer that is both trustworthy and caring? It’s quite possible to finish watching the advert feeling despondent at the inadequacy of conventional gift-giving; wondering if perhaps it would be better to volunteer for Age UK, or to befriend a local old person, than buy any more presents. It’s possible to come away from that advert feeling both angry and ashamed about what is happening to the old of our country.

That the campaign creates such feelings is to its credit. Age UK in York recorded a surge in volunteers signing up with them, after the commercial had screened. Age Scotland, though they had no exact figures, reported that more people had been phoning up and asking about befriending services. The Daily Mail carried a story of a Cardiff family who, inspired by the advert, were inviting a lonely old person for Christmas lunch. For this alone, we can applaud the campaign. Their lovewashing might be sowing the seeds of real care and compassion, creating important webs and connections. Is this caring capitalism? Or just clever, manipulative marketing?

Certainly, some have felt uncomfortable about the advert. Dr Patrick Lonergan, lecturer in consumer culture at Nottingham Trent University, asked: “In an age of intense commercialism, does the ad have mixed messages? Is its heart in the right place? Or does it communicate corporate, materialistic, self-interest values under the guise of charity? For instance, the ad cost multi-millions to produce, yet it is estimated that 'hundreds of thousands' made from only three distinct products will go to Age UK.” Lonergan sees the advert as a “commodification of loneliness”. He was troubled by the fact that when the advert ends the man is still alone on the moon, though with his gift of a telescope. It was a poor answer, he thought, to reach out to an isolated person “not by inviting them into your home, but by giving them some gift that still, ironically, keeps them at the same distance”.

There were similar, though slightly different, feelings about last year’s Sainsbury ad, the film that pipped John Lewis’s Monty The Penguin to the post for most watched commercial. This masterpiece of film-making, featuring the meeting of two soldiers, one German, one British, during the Christmas truce in First World War, was undoubtedly a tearjerker, and Sainsbury’s raised £500,000 for Royal British Legion from sales of a chocolate bar similar to the one exchanged between British and German troops in its advert. Nevertheless, many were left uncomfortable with the use of such a tragic piece of history as a marketing device. As Ally Fogg wrote in the Guardian, the advert left him feeling “a touch nauseous”. “For all the respectful tone,” he added, “the centennial occasion and the endorsement of the Royal British Legion, the ultimate objective here is to persuade us to buy our tinsel, our crackers and our sprouts from one particular supermarket.”

Both Sainsbury and John Lewis have created beautiful, moving adverts. And both have teamed up with charities to ensure that good causes receive some benefit from their adverts' feelgood factor (this year, Sainsbury's will be selling a £3 Mog's Christmas Calamity storybook by Judith Kerr and a £10 Mog soft toy, with all profits from both items going to Save the Children's work to improve child literacy in the UK).

The problem is that inevitably we come to the end, to the last few seconds of film, and are reminded that this is about selling something and often it feels like a kick in the teeth: we feel manipulated. We watch Man On The Moon and there are tears, there is shame, there is empathy. We go on that journey, then are left with the line: “Show someone they're loved this Christmas.” And it is a reminder that this is about a retailer, though admittedly a socially responsible one, an employee-owned company with a lot to recommend it. This is about selling.

There is a pattern in this strand of marketing: a tendency to focus on the timeless seasonal values of peace, goodwill, community and sharing, and on small, appropriate, or emotive gifts. A whole street rallies round with the trappings of a merry Christmas to help out a crisis-stricken family. A bar of chocolate is exchanged across enemy lines in the truce advert, a parcel floated on balloons to the Man On The Moon and a furry toy penguin friend for John Lewis's lonely Monty. What, frequently, we are being told is that it’s thoughtful, not extravagant giving, that is to be valued.

This is, of course, a positive message. But it comes with its own pressures: the need to really think and get it right in the run up to Christmas can produce anxiety. It too is part of the dream we manufacture about Christmas. The perfect Christmas is one where you give and are given the right gifts, those that are useful, that don’t end up in the recycling bin or at the local charity shop come the January clear-out.

Not every brand indulges in seasonal lovewash. Asda, for instance, went at its Christmas campaign with a kind of refreshing honesty. Their “everything” campaign is like a full-throttle ride through the indulgences of the festive season from “light up everything”, through dressing up, treeing up, dancing and popping corks and then falling asleep only to “do it all again”. It’s pure fun. It’s also what many people in the UK really do at Christmas, an endless carnival of activity, consumption and waste. Though if you want to go back to something truly subversive and celebratory of materialism, you only have to reel back to 2013 and Harvey Nichols' “Sorry, I spent it on myself” campaign, a series of ads in which family members receive Harvey Nichols branded presents like paperclips and toothpicks, while the givers parade around in shiny new shoes or dresses.

That said, these adverts are not the trend. The bigger movement that is happening out there is that we are being told that we can shop and care too. That may be so. But gift-giving is just one of the many acts of love, or caring. It is just one of the many languages of love. Yet, in a capitalist society, even a caring one, it too easily becomes the one that speaks the loudest.