The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023
John Lewis's 2023 Christmas ad turns a Venus flytrap, bought as a tree, into a loved pet
For Christmas 2023 John Lewis brought a Venus flytrap to life — a boy's mistaken 'tree' that becomes a loved family member.
John Lewis
What it had to solve
John Lewis's Christmas commercial for 2023 was built on one idea: bring a Venus flytrap to life. In the story, a boy unwittingly buys and grows a pet plant rather than the Christmas tree he thought it was, so the plant enters the family as a new, initially unloved extra personality.
How it works
John Lewis's 2023 Christmas commercial was built on one idea: bring a Venus flytrap to life. In the film, a boy unwittingly buys and grows a pet plant — not the Christmas tree he thought it was — and so introduces a new, initially unloved extra personality into the family.
The flytrap behaves as a character rather than a decoration. Because it was never meant to be a tree, the plant brings its own unintentional bad ways into the household, and the film's comedy and warmth come from the family learning to live with this unexpected addition.
The boy loves his plant despite everything, which makes the wrong purchase the emotional core of the story instead of a disappointment to be fixed. The commercial is preserved in the D&AD Awards archive, which records no view or sales figures, so the case rests on the idea and the character rather than on measured results.
Why it lands
- The product category is the punchline: a Christmas tree that is not a tree gives the ad its surprise and its protagonist in one move.
- Animating the plant as a living personality creates warmth without a dialogue-heavy plot: the family simply has to make room for an extra member it did not choose.
- Starting from 'initially unloved' gives the story an emotional arc — dislike turning into love — which is the feeling a Christmas campaign wants attached to its brand.
- One strong character carries the whole film, so the idea is easy to grasp at a glance and simple to extend across the campaign's storytelling.
What it did
The idea turned the mistake into the story: instead of a perfect Christmas tree, the family gets a plant with a personality, and the boy's love for it carries the festive emotion. The commercial is preserved in the D&AD Awards archive, which records no view counts or sales figures.
What you can take
A familiar ritual can be flipped by giving its object a personality: the wrong purchase becomes the protagonist, and the audience roots for the mistake instead of the perfect outcome.
Since then
The commercial is preserved in the D&AD Awards archive as John Lewis's 2023 Christmas film. The page records no view counts, sales or award details, so the case stands on the idea itself: a boy's mistaken 'Christmas tree' becomes a character the family comes to love, turning a wrong purchase into the heart of the festive story.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card