How are the audience positioned by media producers through the lens of Christmas adverts?

I explored 5 different Christmas adverts from 2015, John Lewis, Sainsburys, the Spanish Lottery, Cadburys and Very A theme I noticed throughout all of these adverts was community spirit and joy amongst people. This itself causes the audience to link Christmas to happiness, giving to others and being nice to the people around you. 

What I noticed in the John Lewis, Sainsburys and Spanish Lottery adverts was the trigger of emotion. These three adverts are highly likely to play on the audience's guilty, empathetic and sympathetic conscience, especially the John Lewis and Spanish Lottery. This is done by putting the protagonist of the advert into a situation we as an audience would be upset to be in...loneliness. Further increasing this sympathy we feel for the characters in the adverts is that they use elderly men, who we already as a society already relate to being vulnerable and lonely and therefore feel sorry for them. Playing with the audience's guilty triggers immediately makes the advert more intriguing to watch, resulting in it being memorable and therefore promotes the company more. 

Another thing I noticed when watching these adverts was the constant use of unrealism. For example, a man on the moon without breathing appliances (John Lewis), a cat with human reflects and thoughts (Sainsburys) and the personification of boxes that can move and walk on their own (Very). This could be a representation of miracles, suggesting that Christmas time is when miracles happen. This idea made me think of when people, mainly children, believe in Santa Claus and elves etc. This then brings in the theme of innocence. All of these things, such as miracles, are already related to Christmas so the producers using them in their adverts then makes us vulnerable to watching them and make us feel more connected to Christmas when watching the adverts. 

In my opinion, the reason Christmas adverts are so popular and work well is because of various reasons. Firstly, I imagine that due to the content involving miracles and myths, they take many people back to a time when they had no worries or stress and therefore make them feel peaceful. Secondly, I think they connect with the audience emotionally by using conventions and themes of emotion such as lonely old people who have no one with them at Christmas, typically a time of joy and love shared with the people you are close with. Lastly, these adverts have a strong theme of happy endings, community spirit and hope. This is what most people wish for and it therefore uses the audiences viewpoint of a "perfect world" and exploits it before their eyes, causing them to watch the advert more and remember it.

Christmas adverts have such a big impact on the audience that they go viral. People always then go and speak about or share what they have seen, causing more people to watch it and then pass it on, whether this is done via sharing on social media or word of mouth. This is what makes the Christmas adverts so popular and well known. This then spreads the word of the company, possibly bringing them more customers and sales-exactly what they want.