The best holiday ad of 2019 — and maybe the best ad of 2019, period — only cost $130 to produce. It’s an ad for a small hardware store in a Welsh town of only 2,000 people. In spite of that, it’s generated as much online exposure as most Super Bowl ads. Since the first of the month, the ad — which features a two-year-old working in a hardware store — has over 2 million views on YouTube, and over half a million more views on Twitter.
The ad itself features a day in the life of Arthur Jones, the two-year-old son of the shop’s owner, Tom Jones, who makes an appearance at the end of the commercial as an older Arthur walking off with a Christmas tree. The ad shows little Arthur running the store for a day — sweeping, reading books to his stuffies, wrapping presents, and running the register — while a version of the 1984 Alphaville song, “Forever Young” performed by Andrea von Kampen, plays throughout. The only cost for the commercial, which was filmed in one day, was in securing permission to use the song itself. The commercial also features four generations of the Jones family, which has owned Haford Hardware for four generations.
The messages of the ad are great, as well: Be a kid this Christmas, but also shop local. After seeing the spectacular failure of the Peloton ad earlier this week, it’s good to see someone else besides Ryan Reynolds create a successful commercial.
