While Tesco, Sainsbury’s and John Lewis have been competing to make Britain cry before breakfast, Lidl has opened its festive season with a karaoke night. “Lidl Christmas Everybody”, posted on the brand’s official Lidl GB YouTube channel, is a social-first music video that rewrites Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody” as a supermarket anthem, with Shaun Williamson – forever Barry from EastEnders – belting Lidl lyrics into a handheld mic. Coolr made it with media agency OMD UK. Directors Sian Bourke and Georgia Baker-Smith keep the whole thing moving like a pub singalong that somehow got a wardrobe budget.
Barry does Slade, Lidl does value
The film opens on Williamson remembering the Slade classic, then deciding the only sensible response is to load a car boot with Lidl bags – license plate M2 V4LUE, in case anyone missed the brief – and tour the street handing festive goodies to the neighbours. He knocks on doors in a blue puffer, then switches into a full Lidl Christmas jumper covered in yellow logo circles, snowflakes and tiny houses, and starts performing the new track. Football pundit Chris Kamara, Capital FM’s Kemi Rodgers and comedian Abi Clarke drop in as cameos. Neighbours get turkeys, mince pies, Christmas jumpers, a coffee machine with a ribbon, even a dartboard with a bow. The crowd grows. By the end Williamson is on a tinsel stage in a red bowler and tartan waistcoat, singing in front of a lightbulb Lidl marquee, before a “Merry Christmas, Everybody!” card closes it out.
The lyric rewrite does the brand work out loud. Lines about bargains just begun and granny swearing Lidl fizz is the world’s best are not subtle, and they are not meant to be. Lidl also sneaks in a Lidl Plus QR-code close-up and a lot of own-brand Christmas range product, timed to the retailer’s Good Housekeeping Institute “Best Value Christmas Range” boast for 2026 and the return of its Toy Bank donations drive. This is not the main Christmas TV ad yet – Creativebrief and LBB both flag it as a social opener ahead of the bigger festive film – but it is already doing the job of getting the brand into the conversation while the tearjerkers soak up the ad break.
What works
Casting Williamson is the smartest decision in the brief. He already owns a particular strain of British Christmas camp through Barrioke and the Barry persona, so putting a Slade parody in his mouth feels inevitable rather than forced. The cameos are short and correctly used as punctuation, not as the whole gag. And Coolr’s Creative Director Marty Lawrence and team lean into silliness without apology: the branded jumper, the value number plate, the stage finale with the glowing Lidl logo. In a week of carefully scored emotional epics, a three-and-a-half-minute karaoke video that wants to be shared is a useful counter-programming move.
Musically, the track is sticky enough. LALA Music’s Lorna Hall supervised the rewrite of a song the UK already knows by heart, which means the parody lands on first listen. You do not need a media plan to explain the joke. That is rare in supermarket Christmas work, where the strategy deck often outruns the idea.
Where it falls short
As advertising craft, it is thin. The structure is door, gift, chorus, next door, gift, chorus, stage. Once you have seen two knock-and-sing beats, you have seen the film. There is no second idea beyond “Barry sings Lidl words to Slade while giving people Lidl stuff”. The product parade – turkey, sprouts, gonk, espresso machine, dartboard, Lidl Plus app – starts to feel like a catalogue set to music rather than a story about neighbours.
It also sits in an awkward slot. By announcing itself as social-first and “ahead of” the main Christmas advertising, Lidl is half-admitting this is a warm-up act. That is fine for TikTok and Meta, but as a YouTube brand film it asks for more than a celeb karaoke loop. Compared with the scale and narrative ambition of this season’s Tesco, Sainsbury’s or John Lewis spots, “Lidl Christmas Everybody” looks like the afterparty flyer, not the party. And for all the talk of cutting through, the value message never gets sharper than a punning plate and rewritten lyrics – which is on-brand for Lidl, but leaves the film with nowhere to go once the novelty of the Slade swap wears off.
The verdict
“Lidl Christmas Everybody” is a cheerful, correctly cast piece of festive noise from Coolr and OMD UK, and Williamson is having a genuine good time in that jumper. As a social opener it will get shares, and the Slade rewrite is a cleaner idea than most supermarket Christmas stunts. As a film, it is one joke stretched to three minutes twenty-four, with a product reel standing in for a plot. Fun enough to open the season. Not nearly enough to close it.
Credits: Client: Lidl GB (Jo Eden, senior consultant for social media; Joanna Gomer, marketing director). Agency: Coolr (Creative Director Marty Lawrence; creatives Mez Beni, Brooke Clarke, Lily Gale). Media: OMD UK. Directors: Sian Bourke and Georgia Baker-Smith. Producers: Sian Bourke, Elliott Gillatt, Liv Fraser, Emma Fischer. Executive Producer: Penny Gabriel. Music: LALA Music (music supervisor Lorna Hall). Cast: Shaun Williamson, Chris Kamara, Kemi Rodgers, Abi Clarke.
Rating: 3 out of 5
