Depicting a Dickensian London, the story opens around the first ever Sainsbury’s store back in 1869. Here John James and Mary Ann showcase their finest produce, showing overflowing tables of apples, eggs and bread. A sack of overflowing glowing clementines catches the eyes of shoppers and a young group of chimney sweeps, including the star of the story, a young boy called Nick.

Unfortunately for the orphan, he is wrongly accused of stealing a Clementine that’s fallen off the table and his evil work master convinces the surrounding crowd that Nick is a thief and has him banished from the city. Luckily for Nick, Mary Ann Sainsbury is watching the whole event, realising Nick has been set up. Later we see the orphan banished in the cold, when he is woken from his nightmares and rescued by Mary Ann who gives him his very own sack of clementines.

Sainsbury’s has unveiled its new Christmas advert, which focuses on the humble beginnings of a young boy called Nicholas and where he was 150 years ago. Based on myth and whisper, the advert reveals the rumoured story behind one of the nation’s favourite Lapland residents.

The advert forms part of the brand’s 150th birthday celebrations, with ‘Helping make Christmas, Christmas since 1869’ sitting at the heart of the Sainsbury’s marketing campaign. Additional food and drink TV, radio, print, digital, social and OOH advertising is planned around the same message.

The approach was to take the traditional serious period piece and playfully subvert i, allowing us to have a big Christmas ad that snuck in touches of twisted fairytales, superhero origin films and even odd left field joke. The director created, and wrote into the treatment, details like the “Gotcha!” stick that the policeman pins Nicholas' arms down with, the Sleigh Jail, how the snow magically forms on his hat for the final reveal and surreal beats like our antagonist eating clementines without peeling them!

The original script was streamlined by the director taking place in one town so we could better build story arches and add to the jokes/carnivalesque nature of the setting, "BURN HIM".

Overall the director wanted this to feel epic, like a slice from feature film in terms at every step of the production process, and particularly when it came to cinematic and production values.