U.K. DEPARTMENT STORE AD GOES VIRAL

A 90-second ad for the British department-store chain John Lewis has “gone viral” on YouTube, attracting more than 150,000 viewers this week. The ad, said to have cost nearly $10 million to produce, uses CGI to seamlessly move a woman through all the phases of her life from birth to childhood to adolescence to marriage to pregnancy to motherhood to old age. The video is accompanied by Billy Joel’s “Always a Woman to Me.” The London Daily Mail commented, “You won’t find many people admitting to crying over the usual flood of formulaic adverts on our screens — yet this ‘moving’ ad has got Britain talking — and sobbing into their breakfast bowls.” Most readers agreed that the ad was indeed touching, but one person wrote grumpily: “Is John Lewis paying you for this story? If not, then [I] really don’t see the point in showing us this cheese.”