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How Asda Made Christmas Incredibublé With Michael Bublé
Asda's 2023 Christmas campaign, titled "Make this Christmas Incredibublé," appointed Canadian singer Michael Bublé as the supermarket's inaugural Chief Quality Officer, positioning him as the festive guarantor of the retailer's holiday product range across television, print, out-of-home, digital, social, CRM, in-store activity, Asda Radio, and Asda Magazine in the United Kingdom.
The campaign launched on 4 November 2023, with a teaser announced on 1 November 2023 featuring a mystery-structure reveal of Bublé singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," as reported by Little Black Book. That teaser aired on Good Morning Britain ahead of the full campaign debut, according to lbbonline.com, giving the launch a news-media amplification layer that extended its reach well beyond paid placements. The campaign announcement was made by Asda Chief Customer Officer David Hills, per thedrum.com, signalling that the partnership carried senior commercial endorsement within the business.
The creative premise centres on a single, culturally resonant idea: that no retailer loves Christmas more than Asda — except, perhaps, one person. Michael Bublé, whose association with Christmas music is embedded in United Kingdom popular culture, steps into a fictional executive role that frames Asda's quality credentials through humour and warmth rather than conventional product demonstration. As Bublé himself stated, per thedrum.com, "I love my relationship with the UK, and I'm the biggest fan of Christmas, so it was an honour to be asked to star in Asda's Christmas advert this year." In his Chief Quality Officer capacity, Bublé sampled Asda products including Black Tiger Tempura Prawns, Truffle and Parmesan Pigs in Blankets, and Chocolate and Orange Panettone, per thedrum.com, grounding the entertainment conceit in a tangible quality narrative.
Asda held approximately 13.9% UK grocery market share in the twelve weeks ending 29 October 2023, according to Kantar, placing it third in a competitive field dominated by Tesco, which held 27.4% over the same period, and Sainsbury's at 15.2%, also per Kantar. That structural position — close enough to Sainsbury's to contest for second-tier loyalty, far enough behind Tesco to require differentiation on grounds other than scale — shaped the strategic logic of an entertainment-led Christmas campaign rather than one anchored in price.
The wider market context reinforced that logic. Take-home grocery sales rose by a reported 7.4% year-on-year in the four weeks ending 29 October 2023, while grocery price inflation ran at 9.7% over the same period, according to Kantar. Grocery inflation had reached a reported 16.7% in January 2023, per Kantar, meaning consumers arrived at the 2023 Christmas season with heightened price sensitivity but also a compressed desire to celebrate after years of disruption. Competing on price alone risked commoditising Asda's Christmas offer; competing on joy and quality, credentialised by a figure synonymous with the season, offered a route to emotional differentiation.
Havas London, Asda's lead creative agency, built the campaign around the insight that Michael Bublé does not merely perform Christmas music — he is, in United Kingdom cultural shorthand, a byword for the season's arrival. By constructing a fictional institutional role around that association, the campaign transformed a celebrity endorsement into a brand architecture story. Media planning and buying was handled by Spark Foundry, with One Green Bean managing social activity and Cow handling PR, as reported by lbbonline.com, reflecting a fully integrated communications model designed to sustain the narrative across earned, owned, and paid channels simultaneously.
Taika Waititi directed the campaign film through production company Hungry Man, according to lbbonline.com. Waititi's appointment signals a deliberate elevation of production ambition: a filmmaker associated with large-scale comic sensibility and precise tonal control brings cinematic credibility to what could otherwise read as a straightforward celebrity vehicle. The result is a piece of retail Christmas advertising that operates closer to short-form entertainment than conventional grocery promotion.
The creative team at Havas London was led by chief creative officer Vicki Maguire, with executive creative director Dan Cole and creative partner Nathalie Gordon, as reported by lbbonline.com and Corq Studio. That combination of senior creative leadership and an experienced director creates a production environment in which the comedic premise — Bublé as a quality-auditing executive sampling festive food — can be executed with the restraint and timing required to sustain a joke across a full-length film without collapsing into parody. The campaign's mystery-reveal teaser structure, which withheld Bublé's identity ahead of the 4 November launch, also required precise editorial discipline to function as earned media rather than merely as a pre-roll.
The visual language of the film integrates Asda's green brand palette with the warm, saturated aesthetic conventions of prestige Christmas advertising in the United Kingdom, positioning the retailer alongside the production values more commonly associated with competitors operating at higher price points. The multi-channel extension — across print, out-of-home, in-store, Asda Radio, and Asda Magazine, per lbbonline.com — required the core creative idea to translate across radically different formats and audience touchpoints, a demand that a concept as legible and self-contained as "Bublé as Chief Quality Officer" is structurally well-suited to meet.
The YouTube asset for "Make this Christmas Incredibublé" received 1,107,478 views, 1,702 likes, and 228 comments, per the campaign archive. Those figures represent a meaningful organic footprint for a retailer's Christmas film, though they reflect a platform on which consumer attention is contested intensely during the November holiday advertising window in the United Kingdom.
Writing for The Drum on 4 November 2023, journalist Amy Houston questioned whether the campaign could replicate the cultural cut-through of the strongest Christmas advertising of recent years, according to thedrum.com — a critical framing that reflects the elevated benchmark set by the UK retail sector's most celebrated festive campaigns. That scepticism is structurally significant: it confirms that the campaign registered with trade press at launch, generating the kind of industry conversation that amplifies earned reach, while also indicating that critical consensus around its long-term impact remained open.
No independently verified sales-attribution or brand-tracking data for the campaign is publicly available at the time of writing. Assessed on structural grounds, the campaign's multi-channel architecture, the earned-media spike generated by the teaser reveal, and the inherent shareability of the Bublé-as-executive conceit each represent meaningful effectiveness drivers. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100 reflects creative ambition that exceeds the category average for United Kingdom grocery retail Christmas advertising while identifying room for stronger measurable consumer response and more distinctive brand integration beyond the celebrity narrative.
Asda's "Make this Christmas Incredibublé" is a 2023 United Kingdom Christmas retail campaign created by Havas London. It appointed Michael Bublé as Asda's fictional Chief Quality Officer, tasking him with endorsing the supermarket's festive product range. The film was directed by Taika Waititi and launched on 4 November 2023 across multiple channels.
Taika Waititi directed the Asda Incredibublé Christmas film through production company Hungry Man, according to lbbonline.com. Waititi's background in large-scale comedy filmmaking gave the campaign a cinematic register that distinguished it from conventional grocery retail advertising in the United Kingdom during the 2023 holiday season.
Havas London created the Asda Christmas 2023 campaign, per lbbonline.com. The creative team included chief creative officer Vicki Maguire, executive creative director Dan Cole, and creative partner Nathalie Gordon. Media planning was handled by Spark Foundry, with One Green Bean managing social and Cow managing PR activity.
Michael Bublé played Asda's inaugural Chief Quality Officer, a fictional executive role created for the campaign. Per thedrum.com, he sampled Asda products including Black Tiger Tempura Prawns, Truffle and Parmesan Pigs in Blankets, and Chocolate and Orange Panettone, lending the entertainment-led concept a tangible product-quality narrative.
The Asda Incredibublé YouTube asset received 1,107,478 views, 1,702 likes, and 228 comments, per the campaign archive. No independently verified sales-attribution or brand-tracking data is publicly available. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100, reflecting creative ambition above the United Kingdom grocery retail Christmas category average.
Asda held approximately 13.9% UK grocery market share in the twelve weeks ending 29 October 2023, according to Kantar. That placed Asda third behind Tesco at 27.4% and Sainsbury's at 15.2%, both per Kantar, providing competitive context for a campaign strategy focused on quality and entertainment rather than price.
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