Long-running advertising properties like Ilse and her family provide many benefits. They’re familiar. They’re consistent. They’re branded. But they also risk wear out – and Albert Heijn’s Christmas advertising needed to feel fresh and emotionally-relevant. The creative challenge was how to make a 5+-year-old advertising property feel new again. We doubled down on long-running consistency, not just by retaining Ilse and her family, but also by bringing back Harry the Hamster, an important family member of Ilse and Bart’s family – and a beloved character in the Dutch public. But we created freshness and emotional relevance through a surprising perspective flip, telling a story of love, loss and redemption – through the eyes of the pet hamster! We also wanted to make it super-Christmassy by setting it all to the tune of “Last Christmas.” This was a long-shot: no-one had ever managed to get 40-year-old song licensed for a commercial … But when we sent the script Andrew Ridgeley and Sony Music, they loved it! The result was our commercial, Whamster!