John Lewis Christmas advert 2026: “Gloria and Pickles” reviewed

It is Christmas Eve and Gloria has run out of ideas. Her grandchildren, Freddie and Maggie, are bored within minutes of arriving, the old wooden toy dog she brings down from the loft barely gets a look, and so she does what plenty of grandparents do: she puts cash in their cards. Then the toy dog starts talking. Pickles, voiced by Paul Whitehouse, tells her she can do better than cash, and the two of them set off across London in a TukTuk for some last minute shopping at John Lewis.

That is “Gloria and Pickles”, the John Lewis Christmas advert 2026, which went live at 7.30am on 3 November with Dame Kristin Scott Thomas as Gloria and Sam Fender singing a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. The line is “Don’t give up on giving”. It is the 20th John Lewis Christmas campaign and Saatchi & Saatchi’s fourth for the account.

Our take: the clearest piece of strategy John Lewis has put on screen in years, built on a behaviour everyone recognises, with a song choice that does real work. It is also busier than it needs to be, and its ending trades the single perfect present for a room full of products.

Credits

• Client: John Lewis; Anna Braithwaite, chief marketing officer; Rosie Hanley, marketing and loyalty director
• Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, London
• Chief creative officer: Franki Goodwin; creative director: Simon Cheadle
• Associate creative directors: George Coyle, Sam Simmonds; copywriter: Paddy Fraser
• Director: Lucy Forbes
• Production company: Smuggler, London; producer Martha McGuirk; director of photography Lasse Frank; production designer Alex Holmes
• Editor: Ellie Johnson, tenthree; post and VFX: Selected Works; colour: Toby Tomkins, Harbor; sound: 750mph
• Media agency: OMD Manning Gottlieb
• Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas (Gloria); Paul Whitehouse (voice of Pickles)
• Music: You Can’t Always Get What You Want, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed by Sam Fender; music supervision Wake The Town
• Launched: 3 November 2026

The brief: sell the gift, not the feeling

For most of its history the John Lewis Christmas advert sold a mood and trusted the shop to do the rest. The Long Wait made giving the hero in 2011, and everything from Monty to Moz followed that template. Since Saatchi & Saatchi took the account, the films have pulled the idea back towards the thing John Lewis actually sells, which is the present itself.

You can see the thread across three years. The Gifting Hour in 2024 sent a woman back through her childhood to find the right present for her sister. Where Love Lives in 2025 had the line “If you can’t find the words, find the gift”. “Don’t give up on giving” pushes the same thought one step further, and aims it at a specific enemy: the envelope of cash.

The commercial logic is plain. A gift card or a bank transfer is a sale that bypasses the store, and a thoughtful present is exactly where a department store with a gift list, a toy department and a vinyl counter should win. With John Lewis having raised brand spend while its losses widened, the Christmas film has to earn its keep in the tills, not just on social feeds.

The idea: the toy that knows better

The strongest thing in the film is the insight, and the client was willing to own it. “I’ve definitely resorted to putting cash in an envelope for fear of getting it wrong,” Rosie Hanley, marketing and loyalty director at John Lewis, said at launch, as Shots reported. That is a real moment of grandparent panic, and the film treats it with sympathy rather than scolding.

Pickles is the device that turns the insight into a story. He is a vintage pull-along toy dog, the Fisher-Price Classics Little Snoopy, which the grandchildren have no time for until he comes to life and becomes Gloria’s conscience. Giving the scolding to a toy, and the voice to Paul Whitehouse, keeps the message light: nobody wants to be told off by a department store, but being told off by a wooden dog is funny.

It also puts a toy back at the centre of a John Lewis Christmas, which is where the retailer’s best years lived. Monty the Penguin worked because a child’s toy had an inner life. Pickles reverses the direction of that magic: this time the toy is helping the grown-up, not the child.

The song: a title that does the copywriting

People will search for the song first, so to be clear: the John Lewis Christmas advert song for 2026 is “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, the Rolling Stones’ 1969 song, covered by Sam Fender. According to the John Lewis press release, it is his first new music since Rein Me In. The recording features a children’s choir from his old school, John Spence Community High School, and brass from the Easington Colliery Band.

It is a sharper choice than the usual slowed-down cover. The title is the whole brief in seven words, Gloria’s problem stated plainly, and the song’s own arc, from resignation to a rousing chorus, matches a film that goes from envelopes to a party. Mick Jagger gave it his blessing in the launch material: “I’m a fan of Sam’s work, so I was pleased to hear he was covering one of my songs,” he said, as Creative Salon reported.

The single is on sale as a John Lewis exclusive white 7 inch vinyl and on CD, backed with Fender’s 2020 cover of Winter Song. All John Lewis profits from the records go to Action for Children, the charity partner for its Building Happier Futures programme, with at least £18,000 expected. For the wider economics of a track like this, see our guide to music in advertising.

The craft

Lucy Forbes is a television director best known for This Is Going to Hurt and Eric, and she directed Three’s Let Fun In launch through Smuggler earlier this year. That background shows. Scott Thomas plays Gloria with a dry, slightly embarrassed warmth, and the comedy comes from her reactions to a talking toy rather than from slapstick.

The look is rich and wintry, shot by Lasse Frank, and the payoff set is a genuine piece of production design. On Christmas morning the envelopes the children open are empty, and Gloria unlocks her home office to reveal the “Gran Cave”, draped in tinsel curtains, disco balls and fairy lights. It is the image the campaign will live on.

The weakness is pace. Three minutes has to hold a family arrival, a bored-children beat, the toy coming alive, a TukTuk ride across London, a shopping trip, the empty envelopes and the reveal. Each scene is well made, but the film rarely sits still long enough for a single moment to land the way the final shot of The Long Wait did.

Beyond the film: 15 hero products

This is the most openly shoppable John Lewis Christmas film for some time. The retailer lists 15 hero products from the advert, including the Little Snoopy pull-along toy, an Audio-Technica turntable, LED star window lights, a Mulberry Eliza tote and a John Lewis velvet cushion, alongside Gloria’s outfits. The Gran Cave is, in effect, a room set from the shop floor.

That is commercially sensible and creatively risky. The film’s argument is that the right present beats cash, but its ending is a room of many presents, so the audience never sees the one thoughtful gift that proves the point. Compare Where Love Lives, where a single record carried the whole emotional load.

The media plan is as broad as ever, as our Christmas ad playbook would predict. After the online launch, the film debuted on TV that evening during Coronation Street on ITV and The Great British Bake Off on Channel 4, then runs across ITV, Sky and Channel 4, broadcaster and subscription streaming including Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+, programmatic video and every major social platform.

The results

It is far too early to say. The film had around 33,000 views on John Lewis’s YouTube channel in its first three hours, which tells us interest exists and very little else. No pre-testing, System1 score or sales data had been published at the time of writing, and the effectiveness mark below reflects that.

The measures that matter will come later: whether the vinyl charts, whether the Little Snoopy toy sells through, and whether John Lewis reports Christmas trading that credits the campaign.

The legacy: where it sits in the canon

Twenty campaigns in, the John Lewis advert is judged against itself, and our ranking of every John Lewis Christmas advert sets the bar. Gloria and Pickles is better than Saatchi’s 2023 debut, Snapper, and more fun than The Gifting Hour. It falls short of Where Love Lives, which said more with less.

What it confirms is that Saatchi has given John Lewis a consistent strategic voice: three years of films about choosing the right gift, each with a clearer enemy than the last. That consistency is worth more than any single advert. The open question is whether the retailer will ever again let one simple image carry a Christmas, rather than a set full of products.

What to steal

• Name the enemy. “Cash in an envelope” is a sharper target than “Christmas spirit”, and every viewer recognises it.
• Let the client confess. A marketing director admitting she has done the thing the advert warns against makes the message feel human, not preachy.
• Give the telling-off to a funny voice. A talking toy can say what a brand cannot.
• Pick a song whose title is the brief. You Can’t Always Get What You Want explains the film before the first line of dialogue.
• Build the payoff set from the shop floor, but keep one hero gift so the argument is proven on screen.

The verdict

Gloria and Pickles scores well for idea and craft: the insight is real, the song is clever, Scott Thomas and Whitehouse are a lovely pairing and the Gran Cave is a memorable set. Bravery is middling, because a talking toy and a famous cover sit squarely inside the John Lewis tradition. Effectiveness is held at five until there is published evidence, and legs sits at six, since Pickles has more potential as a returning character than most John Lewis creations. The marking is explained in how we score.

See every UK Christmas advert of 2026 so far, with the films, updated as each one launches.