- Agency: T&P
- Client: Argos
- Category: Video Design — E-Commerce & Retail
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Project Brief: Create a Christmas retail video for Argos that challenges perceptions of the brand’s product range through witty storytelling, a Dickensian ghost narrative, and playful visual contrasts.
An e-commerce and retail video ad has a funny problem to solve when shoppers think they already know everything on the shelves. In Christmas Past / Christmas Present, Argos and T&P poke fun at the brand’s toy-shop reputation through Richard, a man who has spent years circling the same aisle.
The script borrows the Dickens ghost-of-Christmas setup and plays it straight, which makes the jokes land harder. Old toys float around Richard in a misty blue glow, from a doll in a paper crown to a green dinosaur, like gifts that came back to haunt him.
Grainy VHS clips stamped “NOV 29 1982” show a young Richard in the same mustard corduroy jacket and red tie he wears today. That costume match links his childhood wish lists to the grown man on the sofa without a single line of dialogue.
Quick cuts break the toy-aisle loop once he spots products like skincare tech, and the pace picks up with his realization. The spot ends with Richard leaning out a snowy window beside the line “There’s more to,” finished by the red Argos logo and its smile curve.
