Christmas is a conducive season to creating beautiful campaigns which are commented on and shared millions of times over. And for some advertisers, like John Lewis, it’s their trademark.

When he was only seven years old, Danaan McAleer also wrote and drew his very own story for John Lewis. Last year, he tweeted it and jokingly suggested that John Lewis take on the next campaign. Well, having absolutely loved the quirky Tweet, Twitter and David the Agency did just that and took on the challenge. They decided to entrust the daring task of bringing the kooky adventures of two snowflakes, James and Jack, to director Roxane Campoy and Passion Paris.

In order to bring out the contrast between the naiveté of the story and the tragic destiny of our two heroes, Roxane Campoy treated the film like a book of images, and painstakingly painted each enchanting set in gouache paint. Her poetic touch lends itself beautifully to this task, and the more the narration progresses, the more cynical and surprising that contrast appears.

Roxane Campoy comments: “What a pleasure to work on this project! And to try and adapt as faithfully as possible this most improbable story, to which only children know the secret! It also takes us back to our own childhood memories. I was particularly gullible when I was a child, and I really believed the stories other children told. I have a really sweet memory from kinder garden when a classmate told me she had become friends with some spiders. These spiders would make candy for her and hide it behind a bush during recess. I never wanted to doubt her or her story, which of course was sheer invention, because she would share the candy with me! Ah, the joys of childhood...”