Social media reacts to the UK's John Lewis ad

The British department store's Christmas ad was mentioned nearly 40,000 times on social media within its first hours. How does that stack up to last year?

LONDON — As many would have predicted, this year's Christmas TV ad by John Lewis has provoked a lot of reaction already.

As of 11 a.m. Friday, three hours after the ad broke online, there were 39,872 mentions of the ad's hashtag #manonthemoon on Twitter, including mentions of the teaser hashtag #onthemoon.

The spot, created by Adam & Eve/DDB, sees a young girl named Lily who earnestly tries to send gifts to a man who lives on the moon, whom she has seen through a telescope.

The soundtrack is the Oasis B-side song, "Half a World Away," performed by Aurora, a Norwegian singer. According to data compiled by Hotwire, there were 7,315 mentions of the singer's name between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Friday.

However, the same data search found that sentiment for the ad has so far been largely neutral (88%); with only 10% of Twitter users expressing a positive sentiment and just 2% saying anything negative about the ad.

Last year's John Lewis Christmad ad, "Monty the Penguin," saw its hashtag mentioned 97,257 times within the first 24 hours. 

Christmas ads are an annual tradition in the UK that rivals the Super Bowl for cultural impact. The yearly spot from John Lewis, a department store, has long been the most anticipated. 

Here is a selection of messages sent to our sister site in the UK, @Campaignmag, by Twitter users regarding the latest John Lewis ad:

This article first appeared at

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