Walkers’ Christmas ad gets serious – with the help of Comic Relief...
SNACK FIRM PROMOTING A POSITIVE MESSAGE ON MENTAL HEALTH
WALKERS has revealed its new Christmas advert for 2021, spreading an important message this festive season.
Teaming up with Comic Relief, the Leicester-based snack firm designed the advert to lift the holiday spirit while highlighting a positive message about the importance of mental wellbeing.
The advert, which launched on YouTube this week, follows the main character, Larry, arriving at a festive gathering.
He is accompanied by a floating emoji that represents how he’s really feeling on the inside, despite being all smiles on the outside.
At the end of the advert, Larry finds his friend in the kitchen who greets him with a “How are you?” and a packet of Walkers crisps.
“How are you really?” his friend asks after Larry answers to say he is “fine”.
The simple but powerful scene serves as a reminder about how important it is to talk to each other more.
Working with Comic Relief, the snack brand has pledged to raise £2 million for projects that support mental wellbeing within the UK by the end of 2022.
Comic Relief and Walkers jointly launched the Smiles Fund earlier this year with the aim of bringing positive change to people through humour, arts and comedy.
The Christmas advert, which features a voice-over by radio presenter and mental health advocate Roman Kemp, aired for the first time on ITV yesterday, during the first break in Coronation Street.
In Walkers’ trademark humour, the advert ends with Roman Kemp saying, “It’s good to share... just not your crisps.”
As well as the advert, Walkers is also rolling out fund-raising QR codes on every packet of its crisps over the festive period. When the code is scanned it will take customers through to a “smile-moji” filter, and whenever the filter is used, the firm will donate 10p to Comic Relief.
Josephine Taylor, from Walkers, said: “This Christmas, in partnership with Comic Relief, we’re proud to dedicate our advert to raising awareness of mental wellbeing, and we hope that the launch will raise lots of smiles and get the nation talking this Christmas.”