Barbour Christmas advert sees company team up with Paddington Bear to champion sustainability

The two British icons have teamed up for the South Tyneside-based brand’s Christmas 2021 campaign.

Barbour’s festive film follows the mishaps and adventures of Paddington Bear as he comes up with an idea for a thoughtful gift – re-waxing his owner’s favourite jacket.

Paul Wilkinson, Group Marketing Director at Barbour, whose headquarters are at Bede Industrial Estate, said “Paddington Bear is a much-loved children’s character who is kind hearted and full of good intentions even if he does get into scrapes along the way.

"To celebrate our Re-Waxing Centenary, we have centred the story around a thoughtful gift from Paddington as he re-waxes Mr Brown’s beloved Barbour jacket for Christmas. It’s nostalgic, humorous and sentimental and shows just how much our Barbour jackets are loved and become an important part of the family; if re-waxed at least once a year, they can last a long long time.”

It’s a timely message with the current COP26 climate change summit discussing the impact of fast fashion on the environment - and one that ties in with Barbour’s 100 year anniversary of re-waxing its jackets.

Re-waxing, or re-oiling as it was originally known, first appeared in the 1921 catalogue when Malcolm Barbour, the second generation of the Barbour family, began offering customers the chance to re-oil their oilskin jackets – and it’s a service that still continues today.

Paddington Bear also has decades of history.

Written by Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum, the first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was released in 1958 and remains a children’s firm favourite. Barbour’s seasonal film includes the original Peggy Fortnum illustration style which has never been animated before.

Triple Academy-Award winning production company Passion Pictures produced the animation in hand-painted 2D.

Directed by trio againstallodds, the film was created in TV Paint and aftereffects, with painstaking effort made to faithfully bring Peggy Fortnum’s signature style to life.

Every frame of the animation is hand drawn and painted with close to 3000 hours of work since May going into the design, animation and composition of the final film.

Working closely with the production team at Passion Pictures, Barbour’s integrated creative agency, Thinking Juice, one of the UK’s top ten independents, were inspired by the Paddington quote “Please look after this bear” from the original story to come up with the narrative and the creative elements of this campaign.

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