Forget John Lewis, this £100 Xmas ad will melt your heart
IT has all the ingredients of a major Christmas advert – a young child, a catchy song and a heart-warming storyline.
And it has been going down a storm with hundreds of thousands of views online.
But this is no big-budget production as favoured by brands such as John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, Cadbury and Amazon. Instead it is a Christmas video produced for less than £100 by a family-run hardware store in Mid Wales.
The two-minute advert, which took only one day to film, features two-yearold Arthur Jones. It was made by his father Tom, whose family owns Hafod Hardware, and friend Josh Holdaway.
Their only expense was the music, a cover of Alphaville’s 1984 hit Forever Young performed by American singersongwriter Andrea von Kampen, which cost around £80.
The video opens with Arthur waking and walking to the shop, which has been a landmark in the market town of Rhayader since 1895. He is greeted by his grandmother and dons an apron to start work. Arthur mends a broom, sweeps the floor, stocks shelves and serves customers – including his grandfather – badly wrapping their purchases and giving a thumbs-up.
The film ends with Arthur shutting up shop and bending to pick up a huge tree. As he does, he turns into his father and carries it off while the slogan ‘Be a kid this Christmas’ appears.
The video, posted on YouTube and Facebook on Sunday, has gone viral and is receiving 100,000 views a day. Many say it is their favourite festive commercial of 2019.
Mr Jones, 30, said. ‘The comments we’ve had so far have been amazing.
‘My son is such a bright boy and I would be lying if I said it was difficult to get him to perform on screen.’
He asked Miss von Kampen to cover the theme song.
‘She was happy to do it. She recorded it in a studio and paid $100 (£77) for a sound engineer – that’s all the advert has cost us.
‘But there is an underlying message. We are just a small independent shop in Mid Wales trying to compete with the big boys. We’ve shown that it can be done on a very small budget.’