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The Breakdown
Coles · Take the Credit This Christmas
Coles' Christmas ad admits you're not really cooking, and that's the joke
Instead of pretending shoppers slave over the stove, Coles' new Christmas campaign openly jokes that everyone's taking credit for food they bought, not made, and bets that honesty is funnier than pretending otherwise.
4 min readOur analysis and study notes, not news reporting
The TL;DR (too long; didn't read)
- Coles launched its 2026 Christmas campaign 'Take the Credit This Christmas', created by Smith Street with the TV spot produced by Finch and directed by Freddy Mandy, set to Buster Poindexter's version of 'Zat You, Santa Claus'.
- The ad shows people passing off store-bought Coles food as their own effort: a man serving a Coles ham, a woman repackaging Coles mince pies as her 'famous' recipe, a man shredding charcuterie wreath packaging so colleagues think he made it, and Coles ambassador Curtis Stone salting store-bought roast potatoes.
- The campaign is rolling out across TV plus wider paid, owned and earned channels, with no performance figures reported yet.
01
Naming the shortcut instead of hiding it
Most supermarket Christmas ads show families cooking together; this one shows people getting caught taking credit for food they didn't make, and treats that as something to laugh about rather than hide.
That only works if the joke feels like it's on the audience's side, 'we know, and it's fine', rather than mocking people for not cooking.
Read the original reporting