"Christmas Bells" is an American television commercial produced by

the Hershey Company The Hershey Company, commonly known as Hershey's, is an American multinational company and one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world. It also manufactures baked products, such as cookies and cakes, and sells beverages like milksh ...

promoting

Hershey's Kisses Hershey's Kisses is a brand of chocolate first produced by the Hershey Company in 1907. The bite-sized pieces of chocolate have a distinctive conical shape, sometimes described as flat-bottomed teardrops. Hershey's Kisses chocolates are wrapped i ...

. The advertisement, originally produced with

stop-motion animation Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

and later being redone with CGI animation, features Hershey's Kisses, fashioned as a

handbell choir A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle – traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic – and moves the arm to make the hinged cla ...

, playing the Christmas carol "

We Wish You a Merry Christmas "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is an English Christmas carol, listed as numbers 230 and 9681 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The famous version of the carol is from the English West Country. Popular version The Bristol-based composer, condu ...

". It debuted in December 1989 and is shown in the United States and Canada each holiday season; as such, it is the longest-running television commercial for the Hershey brand. In 2012, the ad was redone with a new recording of the audio and the graphics being redone entirely in CGI animation. Since then, that version had been the version playing each year up until October 2019, when the slogan in the video was slightly updated from "Happy Holidays from Hershey's Kisses" to "Warmest Holidays from Hershey's Kisses". A new version of the commercial was introduced on November 23, 2020. This version depicted the hand of a little girl reaching into frame and taking the red Kiss that plays the last note (this part is a combination of CGI and

live action Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ga ...

), and using it with her father in baking cookies. However, the new version was met with backlash mainly for being changed. The company did respond to the backlash, announcing that both versions would be aired. A third version aired a month later, mainly in Canada, in response to the controversy, in which the red Kiss that was taken by the girl is missing, but quickly hops into frame to play the last note, much to the delight of its fellow Kisses.

Background

In 1989, the Hershey Company began an advertising campaign for their product

, which was referred to as the "whimsy" campaign.

Ogilvy & Mather Ogilvy is a New York City-based British advertising, marketing, and public relations agency. It was founded in 1850 by Edmund Mather as a London-based agency. In 1964, the firm became known as Ogilvy & Mather after merging with a New York City a ...

was the advertising agency behind the spot and David Apicella served as Creative Director. Television advertisements would utilize "tabletop stop-motion animation and CG product photography."

Colossal Pictures Colossal Pictures (also styled as (Colossal) Pictures or (C)P) was an entertainment company that developed and produced television programming, advertising, network branding, and visual effects. Colossal's work has won every major industry award, ...

was the animation studio who produced the commercial. Carl Willat directed the spots and performed the stop-motion animation with Gordon Clark. John Dunn, Hershey's brands manager, oversaw the production and helped develop the last-minute idea to create the "Christmas Bells" advertisement. Leah Longan, former marketing director for Hershey, told ''

the New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 1994 they continued to run the advertisement because they "don't wear out like normal commercials," as they are only shown seasonally.

References

{{reflist

External links

"Christmas Kisses"
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

1989 in American television 1989 in Canadian television 1989 works American television commercials Advertisements Advertising campaigns 1980s television commercials