Back by popular demand – well, I like them – my Elfmas year-end marketing awards. This is where I scour my brain for the marketing moments, themes and insanities that have rendered me inspired, bewildered or frankly dumbstruck over the last 12 months.

Judging panel, shortlist approver, final arbiter – me, me, me. So, if there’s something you’re not happy with below, you know at whom to throw your mini sausage rolls.

The Return to Roots Award for Sanity: John Lewis

One of the first decisions made by Peter Ruis, appointed boss of John Lewis Partnership in January, was to bring back the promise the retailer first made in 1925: ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’.

Why had such a famous slogan been ditched in the first place, just two and a half years earlier? Because, under the prior leadership of Dame Sharon White, the brand harboured dreams of moving away from the difficult business of retail and into seemingly more benign sectors like financial services and home rental. Ruis’s revamped pledge is good basic marketing for two reasons. It gives consumers reassurance on value to match the brand’s reputation for quality at a time when money is tight. And, more importantly, it reminds John Lewis’s 74,000 partner employees of what business it is actually in.

The Keep Calm and Carry On Award for Defiance: Gail’s

When Walthamstow declared war on the upmarket vendor of cinnamon buns and lemon drizzle loaf cake, it looked a fair bet that Gail’s would give up the fight and choose easier ground for its next store launch. A petition signed over the summer by some 2,000 indignant citizens of this most right-on of London boroughs had objected to the planned presence of a branded bakery on its high street on the grounds that, well, it was a branded bakery.

But the brand bet that a vociferous minority was not representative of an entire populace (is it ever?) and plugged steadily on with its planning applications. Today, I am reliably informed, there are queues outside the bright new Walthamstow Gail’s every Saturday morning. A mini victory for markets.

The Confessional Award for Candour: British Airways

In March, the national flag carrier made a big announcement. It was to embark on a programme of improvements to fix no fewer than 600 different touchpoint issues. Imagine making an admission like that: our product and service are basically OK, aside from the small matter of the 600 things that aren’t.

BA’s vow was to spend a staggering £7bn to get things right. Having personally experienced a fair few of those 600 snags this year, when my normal preferred carrier, Virgin, didn’t do the route, I can’t wait for that combination of candour and cash to kick in.

It’s time to break down your brand and build it back up

The Proteus Award for Shapeshifting: JaGUar

Defending the 90-year-old brand’s upper-and-lower visual identity makeover, and the lurid 30-second launch spot that unveiled it, managing director Rawdon Glover claimed that Jaguar “should not turn up like an auto brand”. Instead, it turned up like a fragrance brand, copying all the tropes, archness and dead-eyed stares of that most ephemeral of market categories.

The rebrand has been jumped on by just about everyone, so I’ll add just one call-me-stupid question here: why shouldn’t an auto brand – one of the most famous auto brands on the planet – turn up proudly as what it is? And if its mantra is ‘copy nothing’, why copycat everything from a genre as far away from gleaming metal and advanced physics and motive power as you can get? I am ConFuSed.

‘Fearlessly creative’ or an ‘obvious’ mistake? Marketers react to Jaguar’s concept launch following rebrand

The Here, There and Everywhere Award for Ubiquity: System1

There are lots of quantitative research companies out there but only one that’s truly Out There, turning up in force everywhere I turn up to speak – not only the big shows like the Festival of Marketing but smaller ones, too, like Belfast’s Marketing Meetup. And they are zealots for following up and promoting their cause.

I’ve written before that I don’t always agree with System1’s pre-test methods – its insistence on the need for advertising to be emotional to score well on its bespoke metrics seems unnecessarily didactic to me – but you cannot fault its road-warrior enthusiasm. In its own marketing endeavour, the approach that System1 most closely embodies is the Ehrenberg-Bass diktat of ‘mental availability’. Guys, you’re certainly on my radar.

The !!????!? Award for Marketing Enigma: AI

At October’s massive Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Florida, every single speaker said something about AI. And every single speaker said nothing about AI. Because they all offered up some version of ‘we don’t really know how this works, but we’re kind of experimenting with it’. And a fair few added a warning for good measure: ‘If somebody claims to you that they understand how this technology will transform marketing, they’re lying.’

Well, I am neither so wise nor so foolish as to be that ‘somebody’. Maybe next year. Who knows?

The Shoot-Me-Now Award for Stupidity: IS/ISN’T

In these not-necessarily-coveted Elfmas awards, I like to include one from the domain of marketing frameworks, tools or techniques, just so I can get my own back for having to work with it, usually through gritted teeth. The problem that gives me, though, is choosing from a big, open stupidity field. The perennial contenders are laddering, brand archetyping, consumer co-creation, need-state segmentation and one-word essence.

But the winner this year is that annoying, often mandatory, inclusion in brand definition documents: ‘This brand IS’ (followed by a list of usually generic adjectives) and ‘This brand ISN’T’ (followed by a list of opposites). Hence we discover that Brand X is upbeat, fresh and open, and right alongside it, we learn that it isn’t downbeat, stale and closed. Excuse me, but isn’t this just mind-numbing tautology? Or is there something I’m missing here?

The Gotcha Award for Karma: Post Office

I wrote a mad-as-hell column about the sub-postmaster prosecution injustice in June 2021 and was by no means the first nor the last to do so. But these protestations in print had near-zero effect and the shifty characters that constituted the Post Office leadership must have thought they could get away with anything.

Then came the ITV drama in January this year that reminded us all of the power of television and storytelling. Is the Post Office now a busted brand? I hope so.

Post Office brand health plummets in wake of ITV drama 

The Forward to 2025 Award for Good Intentions: Diageo

It was a bold announcement to make, and will be a harder one to live up to. But this brand team did at least put a stake in the ground where others obfuscate and demur. And that stake, planted by Diageo back in February, was firmly for innovation. The leadership created a new unit with the sole purpose of achieving breakthrough growth through disruptive ideas in product, packaging and delivery.

Innovation was the underlying theme of my columns and talks through 2024, and is the foundational basis for all marketing. If a team at one of our biggest brand-owning businesses is going all-out to achieve it, I’ll drink to that.

The Helen Edwards ‘This Brand Makes Me Happy’ Award: Elf Cosmetics

I love its Camo Liquid Blush, I love what it has achieved for women in business, and I love the silliness of its PowerGrip Primer commercial featuring Jennifer Coolidge sticking to her bathroom door. Elf gets an ‘Elfie’ and, for now at least, all seems right in my marketing world.