November Podcast Round-Up: Navigating Client Chaos and Honest Reactions to 2025’s Christmas Ads

They spoke about bringing clarity and confidence back into a messy agency-client relationship, and this year’s Christmas Ad line-up, from standout storytelling to the ones that seemed like a last-minute gift.

Whether you’re working through ever-evolving briefs, dissecting seasonal campaigns, or just looking to sharpen your marketing instincts, November’s episodes offer a blend of practical strategy, honest agency insight, and plenty of takeaways you can put to work long after the Christmas tree comes down.

From sudden pivots and constantly moving goalposts, to a full-on strategy U-turn, Polly and Dan look at what happens when no one seems to know what they actually want, and the impact this has on time, morale, and results. They’ve got some great tips for bringing clarity, control, and confidence back to the client-agency relationship, and for setting better boundaries without causing tension in your partnership. 

Have you ever worked with a client who wants to change things up every time there’s a new digital marketing update (which is like all the time)? 

The truth is, if we jumped on every piece of news and changed our strategy around it, nothing would get done. Being constantly reactive means you lose your agility and cling to the next new thing without putting a decent strategy into it. 

Although it might not seem like it, every shift like this comes with a cost, which could be time, money, or focus. We’re not saying to ignore every new update; it’s important to stay ahead, and at Flaunt, we’re constantly experimenting. The trick is knowing when to pivot and when to stay the course.

Dan shared a story he heard from a prospect who recently took on a new role, and the business ‘doesn’t believe in brand.’ Translation: Revenues down, so panic is up, and suddenly, all energy needs to be focused on securing leads. 

We’ve spoken about this before, but it’s true. The brands that held their nerve and stuck with brand even when the market got tough, they’re the ones winning now. 

Key advice: brand isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what stops you from spiralling every time the numbers dip.

‘We just want to try new things and see what sticks.’

Testing is good, chaos isn’t. There is a difference between strategic experimentation and throwing everything at the wall. If you’re with a good agency, they wouldn’t agree to this. They would test with intent and provide strategic recommendations, with a roadmap for the strategy to follow.

This was a special one. The full trio of hosts reunited to take on the festive battleground that is…Christmas Ads. As brands race to claim emotional territory earlier and earlier each year, they go through campaigns that deliver festive magic and those that feel like they were wrapped on the way out the door. 

The team digs into the push for stronger investment, the surprising target audiences behind this year’s lineup, and the growing trend of leaning on collaboration instead of brand strength. If you are a brand trying to understand the key themes in a good ad, or simply just enjoy a strong opinion set against a snow-dusted backdrop, then you’re in luck.

There are two moments in the year when brands really remember how to market properly: Christmas and the Super Bowl. 

But imagine if brands looked at the WHOLE year in the same light? Putting that level of creativity and investment into their brand. Marketing would get a whole lot better. 

The team wanted to give just a little reminder: consistency, not just moments of brilliance, is what makes a lasting brand impact.

Aldi’s latest Christmas ad shows that when a brand truly knows who it is, the creative output hits differently. 

Some ads have a clear target audience and do that well, but Aldi stacks them all together and serves a campaign that works for multiple generations, and that’s what smart branding looks like. We’ve spoken about marketing to children, and how much they influence purchasing decisions (including food choices), so it’s a no-brainer for a supermarket to convince children to want to go to the place, ‘where Kevin the Carrot is.’ 

It’s smart brand building that is culturally fluent without trying too hard. They’re such a self-aware brand that taking creative risks just doesn’t seem to be a risk. If their ad bombed, they’d roast themselves before we even had a chance to. 

With multi-layered humour, standout characters, and broad appeal, it’s the perfect case study on how to build a festive campaign that reinforces brand trust, keeps them relevant, and shows creative bravery.

Compared to Aldi’s chaos and charm, this ad seems like it’s from a completely different universe. Not every brand needs the same tone, humour or narrative style to win Christmas. 

This year, John Lewis pulled it out of the bag by doubling down on what they do best: building an ecosystem around their ad. 

With a bespoke track (which is a banger by the way) and a charity tie-in, the campaign isn’t confined to 90 seconds of screen time. It’s boosted on the radio, in playlists, and on social media platforms (yes, there’s a TikTok trend).

This ad provides a multi-channel memory trigger disguised as a Christmas banger. 

On the flip side, do we walk away remembering the songs more than we do the ad? Probably. But either way, the brand recall remains.

Waitrose delivered a rom-com Christmas ad with iconic casting and top-tier storytelling, and was actually voted the office’s favourite ad of 2025. But that doesn’t mean it’s without its flaws. 

It completely misses the brand connection. You can’t have the high production value, Kiera Knightly, AND Joe Wilkinson, without making sure your brand stands out. We will see if people remember this was a Waitrose ad in a few months, but we won’t be putting money on it.

Wallace & Gromit dominate the scene in one of this year’s Christmas ads, but Barbour barely makes an impression. It’s a great partnership, with a clear association with Christmas, but leveraging characters as beloved as Wallace & Gromit grabs the attention, and Barbour loses the limelight. 

When your ads lean too heavily on someone else’s popularity, you risk getting your own brand lost in the mix.

Here are just a few insights that the team spoke about in our podcast episodes, and there’s way more over on wherever you get your podcasts. 

I’ll check back in next month for more insights on our future episodes.