Festive cheer for Lincoln graduates who wrote ASDA’s ‘Elf’ Christmas advert

Two creative advertising graduates from the University of Lincoln came up with the idea for and wrote the script for ASDA’s Christmas advert starring Will Ferrell – their second for a major supermarket in four years.

Rob Greaves, 33, from Wigan, and Sam Daly, 31, from Northampton first met when they both studied creative advertising in Lincoln between 2009 and 2012, and the friendship blossomed into a successful career partnership.

The duo started their career with an advertising agency called Grey, where they worked between 2012 and 2020, before joining another called Now. They are now Associate Creative Directors for Havas London, which is where they got the opportunity to submit pitches for ASDA’s festive campaign, including their successful ‘Have your Elf a Merry Christmas’.

Rob and Sam told The Lincolnite they then chose a director to work alongside and went with Daniel Kleinman, who designed almost every title sequence for the James Bond series of films since Goldeneye.

After approaching Warner Bros, and Will Ferrell, and getting their approval for the advert, part of the deal was that the Lincoln graduates were not allowed to write any new dialogue so had to use what was already in the iconic film.

The teams at Havas London and ASDA worked well together on the Christmas advert.

Rob and Sam said: “We were thinking about what would be good for ASDA at Christmas and wanted something really joyful, happy, and to make people laugh.

“We were talking Christmas films and Buddy the Elf, and he also wears green (ASDA’s colour). We watched Elf around 50 times and made notes. It was a very fine jigsaw choosing the pieces of the film to use.

Rob Greaves on set for the filming of ASDA’s Christmas advert.

“It was technically difficult to ensure it all lined up and thinking about all those things while we wrote the story, but it was amazingly fun and consumed our lives for three or four months. We lived in Christmas mode all that time and it was quite surreal shooting in August and trying to make it look like it’s December.

“There was a sense of relief when it had been picked (by ASDA) and also joy. We were super chuffed as a lot of work had gone into it. Elf is such a loved film and once we knew we were making the advert we knew it had to be great and spot on.”

Although they didn’t meet Will Ferrell in person, the esteemed actor, along with Elf director Jon Favreau and Warner Bros, had to give their approval at each stage of the advert. The duo were even given an Elf brand book, which they described as a “character guide of dos and don’ts”.

“He (Will Ferrell) was doing movie promo for Spirited recently and was asked about the ad, and it was interesting to see his reaction and feels surreal knowing he gave his blessing and likes it,” Rob and Sam added.

“It is always fun to see your work on TV. You get phone calls from your parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. We want to make people smile, it’s why we do this job, and hearing people say they loved it was really good. It’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice to get there, but we love it and it’s a lot of fun.”

Sam (left) and Rob (right) working on the Christmas advert.

This was the award-winning duo’s second Christmas advert for a major supermarket after writing the script for the Marks and Spencer’s festive campaign in 2018, which featured Paddington Bear.

In 2019, as part of Lucozade Sport’s sponsorship of the England’s women’s football team, Rob and Sam created a film. It touched on the hardship of women’s football while keeping a sense of occasion and authenticity, as well as a re-write of the classic England song ‘Three Lions – view that video and more of the duo’s work here. At the time, they said: “As huge football fans the ultimate blessing came from (David) Baddiel and (Frank) Skinner themselves when we approached them with the idea.”

As their careers continue to go from strength to strength, Rob and Sam will never forget their old stomping ground and university roots in Lincoln.

They said: “It is important, it’s where we met and studied advertising. It gave us that first introduction to the industry and opened our eyes to how good of a job advertising is.

“In advertising as creatives you work in pairs usually, so finding each other in Lincoln was massive.

“The course itself is successful and in London there’s a gang of Lincoln alumni doing really well. The Lincoln course is well respected among the agencies in London and has a good reputation, and is up there with the others.”

They have been back to Lincoln a few times to reminisce about the night life and do talks with advertising students, while they paid a special thanks to their tutor Mike Belton for “showing us what the industry is all about”.

So what’s next for Rob and Sam? Well they are working on a big TV advert for beer company Coors, which is going into production next year and will be released in the summer of 2023. As for Christmas adverts, they said: “We are taking a year off to enjoy Christmas next year. It’s a nice thing to get a couple under our belt.”

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