Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot makes his reprise with Home Alone remake

McCann UK has returned as the ad agency for Aldi this Christmas – the supermarket being one the major players in the holiday ad season. The 90-second spot brings back Kevin the Carrot after last year’s Ebenezer Scrooge homage – in the 2021 Aldi McCann version, Ebanana Scrooge is confronted by the Christmas ghost of Kevin. This year, McCann leverages another festive film, Home Alone, hoping for some of the same 2021 success.

According to a research project by Kantar (which, among other techniques, employs “facial coding to determine the power of [an] ad”), last year’s A Christmas Carrot saw huge effectiveness for the brand. In fact, 3600 UK customers ranked the ad “most festive, most enjoyable, and most distinctive”.

The 2022 Home Alone iteration follows the Carrot family as they prepare to board a plane to Paris. Once on the flight, Katie notices that Kevin is missing – Aldi nods to the moment Kate McCallister (Catherine Anne O’Hara OC) realises Kevin is missing in Home Alone with an exclamation similar to the one shown in the film. We cut to Kevin at home, who battles off an intruder with a series of traps before coming across Santa and the rest of the Carrot family in the backyard.

In an Aldi release, marketing director Adam Zavalis states: “Christmas celebrates the joy of being with loved ones and this year more than ever we all need a bit of light entertainment as we celebrate the season together.”

The full 90-second spot follows a teaser trailer launched by the supermarket on 7 November. Titled Feast of Football, the ad shows a range of footballers as pieces of fruit and veg to mark the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022. The World Cup has been widely criticised this year due to human rights violations in Qatar. Same-sex relationships are forbidden in the host nation and, in 2021, The Guardian estimated more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup.