The department store’s Christmas campaign sells a city break, a cabaret and a cheesecake, and the trade will want to know what it does for the tills.
LONDON, England (Link and Lace) – If you cannot afford the flight to Bangkok, Selfridges would like you to know that Santa can be found there by tuk-tuk without leaving Oxford Street. The department store has unveiled its Christmas campaign, and the headline act is not a handbag or a coat but a world tour in shop windows, with a cafe, a cabaret and a subway carriage thrown in.
Eleven cities, one pavement
According to ITV News London’s report, the campaign is called Christmas And The City and runs across all of Selfridges’ UK stores. The Oxford Street windows show scenes from 11 cities: Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, New York, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Milan, Paris and London. Shoppers can follow Santa through a Milanese aperitivo spot, across Parisian rooftops and into a Bangkok tuk-tuk. The retailer describes the aim as capturing “the rush, magic and emotion of the world’s most festive cities.”
Cosmetics Business gives a slightly different count, saying the flagship’s 12 windows turn into scenes from around the world and adding Vice City to the list, so the exact number depends on who is totting up. The Press Association’s version, carried by the Irish News, adds one homegrown detail: a Christmas tree made from traffic cones, designed by Saskia Martindale, standing beside a man dressed as Santa. It is the most London object imaginable, and I say that with affection for every cone.
More than glass: a cafe, a bar and a tram
The windows are only the shop front. ITV reports that the London store has opened a New York-inspired Downtown Cafe, with illuminated skyscraper backdrops and a subway carriage to dine in, serving afternoon tea, diner classics and cocktails. In the evenings, a Paris-themed Cloakroom Bar hosts a festive cabaret.
Cosmetics Business fills in the rest of the programme. The Cloakroom Bar cabaret has tickets for selected Thursdays in November and December. Yellow taxis in New York style run in London and Birmingham, and a yellow tram takeover stops at the Manchester stores. Two new characters, a Bellhop and a Showgirl, act as city guides, with the Showgirl headlining a Broadway-inspired Snow Show in London, Birmingham and Manchester Exchange Square. Santa himself arrives with his elves from 1 December.
Chief executive Andre Maeder, quoted by Cosmetics Business, says “there is no place like Selfridges at Christmas.” As a sentence it is hard to prove or disprove, but the programme is certainly an attempt to make it true.
Why a department store wants you to linger
There is a commercial logic to all of this, even if the coverage does not spell it out. A department store cannot easily compete with an app on price or speed, so it sells time: the reason to arrive, the reason to stay, and the story to tell afterwards. The cafe and the cabaret are reasons to stay. The windows are the reason to arrive.
The timing makes the point. ITV reports that the campaign launched days before Oxford Street became pedestrianised on 26 October, and that Selfridges says the change gives shoppers more reason to visit and linger. The Irish News report records Maeder saying the theme was created by the company’s teams to make everyone feel welcome, and describing a celebration of “cities real and imagined” across London, Manchester and Birmingham. Whether a street without buses sends more visitors through the doors is something the autumn will test. The windows, at least, are ready.
What the coverage does not tell us
Here, for balance, is what none of the reports say. They give no sales figures, no visitor numbers and no indication of what the cafe or cabaret cost to build. They do not claim that experience retail turns browsers into buyers; they simply describe the experiences. The coverage I read also says more about cocktails than coats, which is worth noticing for a fashion publication: the clothing floors are presumably still there, but the story the store chose to tell this season is about atmosphere.
That is a fair strategy, and an honest one, but it is also a bet. Spectacle is expensive, and a window that stops the crowd is only a success if some of the crowd walks inside. Readers should treat the campaign as promising until the retailer shows how it performed.
The comedy corner
I write for The London Prat, whose writers will surely have plenty to say about a cheesecake in a subway carriage on Oxford Street. If you want your Christmas shopping with a smile, try how to spot a joke in the news, wander through the London Prat’s comedy archive, or read some London humor news. Bohiney Magazine has an American take, and you can find more of my London fashion reporting at The London Prat.
Window shopping, with a purpose
The windows are on display now, and the pavement outside is newly free of buses. Stand there for a minute and watch whether people look, point, and then step in or step on. That small act, repeated thousands of times a day, is the only review that matters to a department store, and it is one every reader can carry out for free.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/