Singtel’s heartwarming Christmas ad elicits angry, unrelated comments on Facebook

Ah, Christmas — the most wonderful time of year for voracious shopping, rushing to clear leftover leave days, and of course, a slew of corporate commercials dedicated to the season. 

To be fair, Christmas ads tend to be pretty great! Forgetting the fact that these are snippets of promotional videos for brands, the short films can be actually heartfelt (John Lewis, every year), advocating (Iceland Foods, 2018) or even arthouse (H&M, 2016). Singaporean brands do it too, by the way, and Singtel recently pushed out theirs. 

Since the telco dropped their 2019 Christmas ad last week, the video has clocked in more than two million views and hundreds of comments on YouTube.

It’s not surprising to see why — the ad’s pretty emotive, not to mention highly relatable to the masses of parents who have or are currently dealing with teen children. 

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E700iYDdk4[/embed]

The comments have been largely positive (surprising, considering how bad YouTube users can get), including remarks about how it’s an ad that they don’t want to skip. 

Props to Singtel, then. But head on over to the telco’s Facebook page, and things get… angrier.

Totally ignoring the point about spending time with family and appreciating their sacrifices, Singtel customers instead chose the video’s comments section to sound off their grievances about the company’s services. It’s a stark contrast from all the warm and fuzzy feelings on the same video on YouTube. 

ilyas@asiaone.com