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Boots 'Homecoming'

The brief here was to remind us that Christmas is not just about gift-giving, it’s an opportunity to celebrate the special people in our lives. We follow members of one extended family who have elected to break the conventional Christmas routine. They have stayed up late and travelled through the night to come together in the early hours of Boxing Day to surprise Mum – a nurse who has given up her Christmas Day to put in a gruelling shift at work. The ad was backed by a campaign across cinema, outdoor, print and social media.

John Lewis 'Monty the penguin'

John Lewis’ Christmas commercial evokes the magic of festive wish fulfilment by depicting an unlikely friendship between a boy, Sam, and his penguin friend, Monty. Throughout the year, they are inseparable; however, as the winter months draw in, Sam realises Monty is longing for a companion. Thus the emotional pay-off as, to Tom Odell’s version of The Beatles’ Real Love, Sam gets Monty the perfect gift – a new penguin friend. As the strapline has it: "Give someone the Christmas they’ve been dreaming of."

McVitie’s Victoria 'Christmas choir'

Last year, McVitie’s developed a menagerie of "sweeet" creatures to evoke the feelings of satisfaction its biscuits give us. For Christmas, the cast of cuddly animals was extended – and formed up into a choir. The scenario is a familiar one – a family sitting round watching telly – but, when they open up a McVitie’s Victoria box, our furry friends (puppies, kittens, reindeer, a duckling and even a narwhal) begin materialising and join together to bark, meow and quack their way through a winsome rendition of Yazoo’s Only You.

Sainsbury’s 'Christmas is for sharing'

This festive offering from Sainsbury’s evokes the legendary football game between German and British troops in no man’s land on Christmas Day in 1914. It’s an epic of lavish detail: Sainsbury’s and The Royal British Legion sought to portray the event as accurately as possible, sourcing original material and working with historians throughout the process. Game over, we see two players shaking hands – and the British soldier slips a chocolate bar into the pocket of his new German friend. After all: "Christmas is for sharing."

The Co-operative Food 'Marzipan'

We all manage to forget something when we do the big Christmas grocery shop – and the omission strikes us in the unlikeliest of settings. That’s the insight behind this ad, which positions The Co-operative Food as the shop we should turn to when we realise we have left something off the list. It’s a montage of comic moments as people in everyday situations remember a vital ingredient – "marzipan!" – and blurt it out, regardless of where they are or who might be listening. It’s just as well that "Help is only a Co-op away this Christmas".