Sainsbury’s has unveiled its 2022 Christmas advert ‘Once Upon a Pud’ featuring TV personality Alison Hammond and a voice-over from Stephen Fry.
Through a light-hearted medieval tale, this year’s advert promotes the supermarket’s ‘Taste the Difference’ Christmas range and centres around the traditional Christmas pudding.
Hammond plays a Countess in charge of choosing the food for a festive feast but her distaste of Christmas pudding soon proves to be a problem.
A fear-stricken young chef has his Pud rejected by the Countess but nevertheless makes it his mission to impress the head of the feast with a newly designed Christmas pudding.
Set to a medieval instrumental version of Wheatus’ ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, the cook works through the night to design and a Taste the Difference Caramelised Biscuit Christmas Pudding. When the creation is presented to the Countess she asks, “Is that caramelised biscuit?” and then proclaims, “Mmm…that’s a bit of me”. The room then breaks into laughter as the cook is praised for saving the Christmas feast.
The film, produced by creative agency Wieden+Kennedy London, ends with Stephen Fry saying: “And that’s why you can Taste the Difference”.
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“Food plays a central role in any celebration, and we wanted to bring to life the imagination and innovation that goes into creating our Taste the Difference Christmas range,” Sainsbury’s head of campaigns, Laura Boothby, said.
“We also wanted the ad to provide some fun and light-hearted Christmas cheer and who better to do that than Alison Hammond.
“We’ve focused on the Christmas pudding specifically because we know it’s divisive – people love it, or they hate it – and that’s why we’ve created the Taste the Difference Caramelised Biscuit Pudding.”
The 60-second commercial launches for the first time today, with 20 and 30-second cuts also debuting across TV and on social, with the full 85-second advert available to watch on YouTube.
Alison Hammond herself added: “I absolutely loved playing The Countess in this year’s Sainsbury’s Christmas advert. It got me feeling all festive and was such a laugh!
“The Taste the Difference Caramelised Biscuit Christmas Pudding was absolutely a bit of me and will definitely make an appearance on our table this year. Just not sure if I can wait until Christmas day to try it again!”
