No prizes for guessing which department store has influenced Heathrow Airport's new Christmas ad.
While this year's John Lewis advert is a thinly-veiled metaphor for recent events in America, Heathrow has stuck with the age-old tear-jerking approach, employing two animate teddy bears to play a cute old couple visiting the capital for Christmas.
Heathrow's marketing team has gone with the savvy decision to use the Chas and Dave ballad I'm Going Back (from the album Tottenham to Tennessee) rather than paying Ellie Goulding to posh-talk her way through Tiny Dancer. It makes all the difference.
There are perhaps a couple of inaccuracies: when was the last time someone at border control smiled at you? And in the real world, the teddies' flagrant disregard for standing on the right of the escalator (Heathrow counts), would surely be met with the angry elbows of returning Londoners keen to get back into the swing of things.
Anyway, we like this advert. And we reckon the teddies will be back in 2017 with some cutesy third runway propaganda. Not even Sadiq could resist that.
