While Tesco UK spends three minutes on a road trip between two old school friends, its Irish arm has gone smaller and, in some ways, smarter. “Helping Christmas Feel Magic” is Tesco Ireland’s first standalone Christmas spot in more than a decade, a 90-second film from BBH Dublin about a six-year-old who becomes convinced that the helpful man in the blue fleece at his local Tesco is an elf in disguise. It is a children’s detective story built around one idea: the staff are the magic. It is a corporate message in a bobble hat, and the hat helps.
WHAT HAPPENS ON SCREEN
It opens by the fire, where Granny reads to her grandson from an old green volume called “Wild Elves of Ireland”: they live among us, she whispers. The next day the book comes along on the weekly shop. He reads it in the aisle while his mum pushes the trolley, and the evidence starts stacking up. A colleague in a beanie and blue fleece fixes things with suspicious skill and keeps appearing exactly where help is needed. Soon there is a conspiracy wall in his bedroom, complete with red string, crayon sketches and pages copied from the book.
The case builds. Granny’s book says elves love chocolate, marshmallows and all the sugar they can get their hands on; the boy presses his face to a frosted window and watches his suspect wrap both hands around a hot chocolate piled with cream and marshmallows. In the car park he finally confronts him – “Hey, I know what you are” – and the moment fizzles into awkwardness. The payoff comes on a snowy night at click and collect: the colleague loads the family’s bags into the boot and leaves a candy cane in the boy’s hand, exactly as the book’s chapter “The Gifting of the Candycane” predicts. The end line “Helping Christmas feel magic” appears with the Tesco logo, and then a tag: a colleague’s phone buzzes on a staff-room table, the caller ID reads “Santa”, and he answers, “Hey boss… I’m on the way.”
CREDITS
Brand: Tesco Ireland. Film: “Helping Christmas Feel Magic,” 1:30, published on the official Tesco Ireland YouTube channel on November 2, 2026; the campaign runs across TV, social, OOH, print, activation and in-store until December 25. Agency: BBH Dublin (CCO Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes, ECD Marcos Gemal, ACD Frances O’Rourke, creatives Jemma Burgess and Gemina Flores). Director: Elliott Power, through Love Song and Assembly. DP: Patrick Golan. Edit: The Quarry, editor Jonnie Scarlett. Post, VFX and colour: GABHA Studios (colourist Andrew Francis). Sound: Scimitar Sound. Music: original score by Miink, music supervision by Curation Music. Illustrator of the Wild Elves of Ireland book: Kitty Moss. Shot in two working stores, Tesco Naas Extra and Tesco Celbridge. Credits per shots and LBB Online.
THE EXECUTION
Elliott Power shoots the whole thing from the boy’s eye level, and it pays off. The aisles look enormous, the colleague is often half-seen or cropped at the shoulder, and the warm, low-lit interiors give a grocery store the texture of a mystery film. The decision to shoot in real, working stores keeps it grounded: these are not the polished sets of a UK blockbuster, and the cramped staff room in the final tag looks like an actual staff room. Miink’s score tiptoes along with the boy, playful without tipping into Hollywood whimsy, and Kitty Moss’s illustrated book is a lovely prop that does double duty as the campaign’s OOH centrepiece.
The child casting is the engine. The boy is serious, suspicious and never cute on purpose, which is why the car-park confrontation gets a real laugh. Granny’s narration supplies the folklore and a warm Irish voice without overexplaining.
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
What works: the strategy and the story are the same thing. BBH Dublin needed to say that Tesco colleagues make Christmas happen, and instead of a montage of smiling staff it gives us a kid gathering evidence. Every helpful act is a clue, so the brand message is delivered as plot rather than voiceover. The candy cane payoff is set up and paid off cleanly, and the “Santa” caller ID is a neat final wink that lets adults decide for themselves whether the boy was right.
What doesn’t: the middle sags. Between the hot chocolate and the click and collect handover there is a stretch of busy cutting – a party table, another child, a confrontation – that feels like it was compressed from a longer edit, and on first viewing it is not always clear who is who. The colleague is also a little too anonymous: we see his helpfulness but never really his personality, which keeps the emotional ceiling low. And the idea of staff as Santa’s helpers is hardly new territory for a supermarket at Christmas; it is the boy’s investigation, not the premise, that makes it feel fresh.
VERDICT
“Helping Christmas Feel Magic” is a modest, well-made return to Christmas advertising for Tesco Ireland: a small-scale detective story with a strong child performance, a good prop and a closing gag that lands. It will not compete with the budgets of the UK giants, and the middle needs air, but it understands its audience and turns a staff appreciation brief into something families might actually enjoy watching. Rating: 3.5 out of 5.