Banjoman’s P.O.B. on Crafting Eason’s Quietly Magical Christmas Spot
Christmas ads tend to be about spectacle and performance, razzmatazz and glam, jingle bells and schmaltz. But when bookshop Eason approached production company Banjoman with a brief to capture a small, human Christmas moment, director P.O.B. knew to cut back on the baubles in favour of realness.
“It was about the rituals, the inside jokes, the gifts, the moments we all know so well,” he says. Drawing from his own family experiences, he aimed to protect the script’s emotional core, without leaning into forced sentiment. The result is a festive spot where humour is understated, performances feel lived-in, and the tiniest gestures speak volumes, all captured in a remarkably tight production timeline.
LBB> What was the brief from the client and agency? How did you decide to interpret it?
P.O.B.> The brief was really about capturing a small, very human Christmas moment. Harnessing those moments we all know so well, the rituals, the inside jokes, the gifts. I looked to my own family and how I see my kids interact with their grandads and I wanted to translate that emotion on to the screen.
What I loved from the start was that the script already had this quiet emotional centre, and I wanted to protect that. I didn’t want to lean into Christmas magic in a forced way. I just thought, let’s tell this honestly and let the real emotion sneak up on you. If we could make people smile and feel something without pointing neon arrows at the feeling, that was the goal.
LBB> The tone and humour of the campaign is subtle yet it tugs at the heartstrings, tell me about how you worked to strike the balance.
P.O.B.> We talked a lot in pre-production about holding back, cutting out unnecessary dialogue and letting those looks, gestures and tactile moments do the heavy lifting for us. This brought everything to a more human level. The interactions felt more warm and real while the jokes softened into something more everyday.
Same with the emotion. We didn’t want to play emotional moments. We just let things land quietly and trusted the audience to meet us there. I think when you treat the story with that kind of restraint, the warmth comes through naturally. It feels like something you’ve lived, not something you’re being sold.
LBB> When it came to casting, did you have a clear idea of the qualities you were looking for in the actors and did you know immediately when the actors read?
P.O.B.> Yes, there were a few things we were looking for, for sure. On a practical level we needed actors whose performances could handle the intensity of a one day multitude location shoot. Then character-wise, we were always looking for acts that could capture the subtleties of those emotional changes. I was always looking for smaller performances that felt real, people who could show what’s going on underneath. The little flickers of thought that don’t need dialogue.
When the right actors read, you feel it straight away. There’s this ease to them, like they just are the character. They listen. They respond. They’re comfortable in the silences. We got some absolute gems with our young talent Cassie and our Grandad Gerry. They had natural chemistry on and off screen. It was amazing to see.
LBB> Christmas campaigns are notorious for long pre-production, yet this spot was turned around in just a few weeks. How did you manage such a tight timeline?
P.O.B.> Honestly that was all about the team in Banjoman: Keith, Matt and Órla. They were unreal in pulling it all together in such a short time frame. The trust the team at Dynamo and Eason put in us was so helpful here too. Everyone involved was on the same wavelength about what this needed to be.
We made decisions quickly, kept communication really open, and stayed close to the emotional core of the story.
LBB> Have you done a Christmas campaign before and do you feel any added pressure creating festive spots?
P.O.B.> It’s actually not my first campaign, I was lucky enough to work on a charity campaign for Saint Vincent DePaul here a couple of years back which is a project I still love. But this was for sure my first campaign of this nature, more in the classical Christmas ad sense. There was a bit of pressure in representing such an iconic Irish brand like Eason on screen but once you're rolling into production, you have no time to stop, think or feel the pressure so that helped for sure.
LBB> Looking back at the finished ad, is there a particular moment or element that you feel perfectly captures the spirit of the brief and the campaign as a whole?
P.O.B.> There's two things that come to mind here. Firstly, the music. We had gone into this project thinking that this ad would have a classic Christmas score, with all its jingles and swells at the right moments. However when we got into the edit, this music, although it was working perfectly, just seemed to sign post things too much and emotionally lead the viewer. Our editor Rob Hegarty popped our track 'I’m Living Good' on just to see what a different genre would do to the film and the transformation was instant and we knew that this style of track was what this film needed, understated but beautiful. So happy we managed to get the track in the end, big shout out to Jess on that one!
The second moment was when we were on set, shooting our final scene, the present handover. We were shooting the grandads close ups and as our camera moved in towards him I saw the eyes get glassy, a beautiful piece of acting. A tiny look exchanged, just a small, honest moment, full of emotion. When we shouted cut we heard laughter from the video village, a strange one I thought but then we found out it was because everyone had been crying watching the monitors. That's when I knew we might have something special.
