M&S managed to relaunch themselves by getting a bunch of models (including Twiggy) to dance around in their undies to a few rare grooves. Matalan followed suit with some slightly crapper tunes and Melanie Sykes in Twiggy’s place. Fair enough; Matalan is to Marks and Spencer as Mel Sykes is to Twiggy.
But now, Debenhams have pulled rank on both of them with their latest advertising campaign. It features a “state of the art” Santa who is thin (natch) and wears a red suit (bien sur), has trimmed his beard (yeah – I always thought that original beard was a bit too rrrrock), drives a motorised sleigh (reindeer are so passe), and is dancing to a def version of “Santa Baby” that sounds like it was produced by the DJ equivalent of Ronnie Hazelhurst. It’s impossible to describe how bad this tune is but if I told you it has someone saying “DJ Santa on the Wheels of Steel” over it, perhaps you’ll have some inkling of the enormous distance by which the mark was overshot.
