ARCHIVEUnwrap the Sparkle - H.Samuel | Clapboard Ad Archive
Unwrap the Sparkle from H. Samuel signals the jeweller’s concentrated effort to own the emotional...
Very Turns Early Christmas Shopping Into the Best Excuse
Very's 2021 Christmas advert, 'It's the Very Best Excuse', is a film-led UK retail campaign created by Grey London that launched in October 2021, positioning the online retailer as the natural starting point for consumers ready to embrace the festive season ahead of the traditional Christmas rush.
The campaign arrived approximately 85 days before Christmas Day 2021, making its early appearance not incidental but deliberately strategic. The central proposition — 'Christmas is this very moment' — reframes premature festive behaviour not as impatience but as inspired permission. Rather than waiting for December to justify decorating, gifting, or indulging, the campaign argues that Christmas itself provides the excuse, and Very provides the means. The platform extended beyond its initial film execution, later incorporating a second creative instalment that deepened the campaign's narrative territory.
Very, the online retail brand of The Very Group, operates exclusively in the United Kingdom and positions itself around a broad fashion and lifestyle range that spans celebrity collaborations and high street labels, supported by next-day delivery and Collect+ fulfilment options. The 2021 campaign gave that practical proposition an emotional wrapper: variety and speed, dressed in festive licence. In the United Kingdom, where the Christmas advertising season has long functioned as a cultural flashpoint for retail brands competing for consumer attention and wallet share, launching 85 days out is a deliberate act of category disruption. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, reflecting its competent execution within a highly contested seasonal format.
Very's campaign rests on a single, well-observed consumer truth: Christmas indulgence already happens well before December, and British shoppers feel vaguely guilty about it. 'It's the Very Best Excuse' dissolves that guilt by naming it. The campaign's platform positions festive licence as a justified cultural phenomenon — one that covers everything from premature tree decoration and daytime drinking to unusual gift choices and early online shopping — with Very as the enabler of all of it.
The timing was acutely calibrated to the UK's shifting retail landscape. In the United Kingdom, ecommerce accelerated to approximately 28% of retail sales excluding fuel in 2020, up from 19% in 2019, according to Enders Analysis. That structural shift did not reverse sharply in 2021; per Enders Analysis, UK ecommerce was expected to hold at approximately 27 to 29% of retail sales excluding fuel through that year. For an online-only retailer like Very, this represented a materially enlarged addressable market of consumers already habituated to digital-first shopping. The campaign's emphasis on next-day delivery and an extensive product range speaks directly to that audience's expectations: speed, choice, and frictionless fulfilment.
The competitive landscape for UK Christmas advertising is among the most fiercely contested in global retail, with department stores, supermarkets, and pure-play online brands all investing heavily in film-led festive platforms. Very's strategic response is to own the calendar advantage — arriving before rivals, staking a position on 'earliness' as a virtue, and making that position feel culturally savvy rather than commercially opportunistic. The brand had previously explored gift-giving as an enabler of personal potential in its 2018 campaign 'Elsie's Gift', as documented by Creative Salon; the 2021 platform marks a tonal shift toward licensed indulgence, broadening the emotional register considerably.
Grey London created 'It's the Very Best Excuse' as a film-led platform for Very, launched in October 2021 across the United Kingdom. The campaign's creative territory is built around the idea that Christmas behaviour — the rituals British consumers engage in earlier every year — is not an embarrassment but an entitlement. The platform frames a catalogue of festive indulgences as collectively sanctioned by the season itself, with each behaviour presented as 'the very best excuse' the calendar has to offer.
On screen, the campaign depicts a series of quintessentially British festive scenarios in which characters use Christmas as the stated justification for behaviour they would otherwise have to defend: putting decorations up early, buying gifts that suit the giver as much as the recipient, and beginning the celebrations long before convention permits. The tone is warm, knowing, and lightly comic — an acknowledgement of shared cultural behaviour rather than an aspirational fantasy. A second creative execution extended the platform, deepening its narrative world beyond the original film.
The campaign ran across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, with the film format anchoring the multi-channel distribution. Production credits for 'It's the Very Best Excuse' beyond the confirmed agency attribution to Grey London are not publicly documented in available sources. Very's product proposition — celebrity fashion ranges, high street labels, and next-day delivery via Collect+ — is woven into the creative logic rather than presented as a hard sell: the 'excuse' is emotional, but the destination is functional and specific. As reported by davidreviews.com and campaignlive.co.uk, the campaign was noted within the UK advertising industry as a coherent and timely festive platform, consistent with Grey London's approach to seasonal retail briefs.
Very's 'It's the Very Best Excuse' generated approximately 2.996 million views on YouTube, alongside 358 likes and 216 comments, based on figures documented in the campaign archive. For a UK retail Christmas advert operating in one of the most crowded seasonal advertising environments in the world, crossing the threshold of nearly three million views on a single platform represents a meaningful measure of audience reach and engagement.
No verified awards for the campaign have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC's effectiveness databases. The absence of formal recognition does not diminish the campaign's functional contribution: arriving 85 days before Christmas Day, the film staked an early-season position in UK consumer consciousness at precisely the moment when festive purchase intent begins to form. In the United Kingdom, where ecommerce held a structurally elevated share of retail sales through 2021 according to Enders Analysis, a campaign that reinforces next-day delivery credentials and product breadth carries direct commercial relevance beyond its entertainment value.
Structurally, the campaign's decision to extend into a second creative execution suggests the platform had sufficient elasticity to support a broader seasonal narrative, a marker of strategic durability in a category where many competitors exhaust their creative territory within a single film. The Clapboard Score for 'It's the Very Best Excuse' is 59 out of 100, reflecting solid execution and clear strategic intent within a competitive UK retail seasonal format, while indicating scope for deeper emotional impact and measurable effectiveness proof points.
'It's the Very Best Excuse' is Very's 2021 Christmas advert, created by Grey London and launched in the United Kingdom in October 2021. The campaign positions festive indulgence as culturally justified and frames Very as the ideal destination for early Christmas shopping, built around the proposition that Christmas is this very moment.
Very launched 'It's the Very Best Excuse' approximately 85 days before Christmas Day 2021, placing the launch around 1 October 2021. The early arrival was a deliberate strategic choice, designed to claim a position in UK consumer consciousness before rival retailers entered the Christmas advertising season.
Grey London created 'It's the Very Best Excuse' for Very. The London-based agency developed the film-led platform, which extended across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest in the United Kingdom. A second creative execution later expanded the campaign's narrative beyond its original film, as reported by campaignlive.co.uk.
The Very 2021 Christmas advert 'It's the Very Best Excuse' received approximately 2.996 million views on YouTube, alongside 358 likes and 216 comments, according to figures documented in the campaign archive. For a UK retail seasonal film in a highly competitive advertising environment, that view count represents substantial organic audience reach.
Very's 'It's the Very Best Excuse' campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100. The score reflects competent creative execution and a clear strategic proposition in the United Kingdom's competitive Christmas retail advertising landscape, while indicating room for stronger measurable effectiveness and deeper emotional resonance across the campaign platform.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
