The Wish // PENNY Christmas 2021
PENNY Markt GmbH
Issue 61 | January 2022
Agency
Serviceplan Campaign 3 GmbH
Creative Team
Creative Managing Director Christoph Everke Creative Director Moritz Dornig Senior Copywriter, Concept Alessia Coschignano Senior Art Director Rebecca Labiner Junior Copywriter Katharina King Junior Art Director Elvira Breit
Production Team
Production Companies Neverest, Iconoclast Germany
Other Credits
Senior Account Manager Julia Leibetseder
Date
November 2021
Background
In 2021, young people, especially, continued to put aside their own interests to protect older people from the consequences of the pandemic.
With Christmas on the way, PENNY wanted to thank this generation for paying such a high price.
Idea
‘The Wish’ was a film in which a young man asks his mum, ‘What do you really want for Christmas?’ Her reply is to wish that he wouldn’t spend so much time at home; that he’d sneak out at night and behave badly so he’d have to be picked up, drunk, from the police station; that he’d throw a party that gets out of hand; find a girl and get dumped. All the things that might have happened were it not for Covid-19.
Alongside the ad, PENNY is running a competition with 5,000 adventures and experiences as prizes. In addition, the company is offering six new jobs for trainees with flat share places for them in Hamburg and Berlin.
Results
Launched on November 11th, two weeks later the video had over 10 million views on YouTube and was rapidly becoming a cultural and social media talking point.
Our Thoughts
I’ve been looking at all the UK’s Christmas TV spots, from the annual John Lewis tug at the heartstrings through to Boots’ use of this year’s favourite actress and what a sorry lot they are, either ignoring Covid or pretending it’s over, which it bloody well isn’t. Both my children are in their midtwenties and both are now living at home.
As a parent I find this acknowledgment of the truth, that the pandemic has been and continues to be a blight on youth, moving and encouraging. What could easily have been mere virtue signalling is given real substance by the giveaways of adventures and the creation of new jobs. If PENNY had stores in the UK, that’s where I’d be doing my Christmas shopping.