The 2024 Boots Christmas advert was released recently and the discourse surrounding it has been shocking. The advert, featuring the use of they/them pronouns as Mrs Claus says “Oh that’s very them” is one of the best to be released this year, yet sparked damaging conversations about inclusivity in advertising.
Christmas adverts are staples for the beginning of the festive season and are long awaited by many. They are fun, they are silly, they often do not relate to the company they are advertising at all. The Boots advert aesthetically ticked all those boxes.
Actor Adjoa Andoh is cast as Mrs Claus, doing all the work for Santa with the tagline, “you thought it was all him?” It’s whimsical and alludes to the erasure of women, particularly black women, in folklore and in commercial advertising.
But there have been plenty of remarks on social media that Boots has gone ‘woke’.
The advert sparked speculation on Jeremy Vine‘s chat show. He said many have questioned how “it’s unlikely Santa Claus’s wife would have been black.” It’s interresting that the rhetoric of race needs to come into this dicsussion at all- particularly when detailing a fictitious marriage. If anything, it rewrites the Santa Claus narrative to make space for marginalised groups.
Carol Malone, on Jeremy Vine’s show stated, “Boots is already losing business as it is, with this advert it’s like they want to lose business.” She also said that the inclusion of gender-neutral pronouns was “alienating” the rest of their audience.
According to The Independant, one critic said that the ad was “anti-white male and anti-male in general. Even the music is all about females.” X comments have equally commended John Lewis and Apple on their “non woke advert[s]”.
The Boots advert plays on traditional expectations of gender, that problematic cliché that ‘behind every successful man there stands a woman,’ and lingers on the feminist angle that Christmas has all too long been dominated with masculine iconography of Santa and his elves.
According to these critics, inclusion leaves the cis white man behind. This is a narrative heard far too often alongside campaigns like Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ+ movement. Once again, progress comes alongside the emergence of racist and homophobic ideologies amongst the British public.
What these critical responses fail to acknowledge is that queer and gender fluid people are potential buyers of Boots products, and the inclusive language was completely ineffectual to the advert’s plot or purpose.
So, yes Boots has lost the respect of some buyers due to this advert, but it will allow more gender fluid and queer people to feel welcome in their store. The loss of respect from some, inevitably leads to Boots gaining respect from others, calling into question the kind of buyer Boots are now looking to advertise to. Perhaps not the cis white man.
