Asda has made an A Team of gnomes the star of its festive ad, as the ceramic commandos go on a mission to rescue Christmas in its stores.

The decision to feature gnomes in the ad follows the popularity of the garden ornaments in Asda stores, with the retailer selling over 100,000 festive gnomes over the last four Christmas periods.

The ad opens with two Asda workers, staring out of a store into a huge snowstorm, concerned over how they are going to get the store ready for Christmas.

One colleague picks up a gnome and presses its nose – it lights up green, sending a signal to hundreds of gnomes across gardens, pub shelves and tower blocks nationwide, who answer the call for help.

Set to the theme of The A Team, the gnome commandos – Max, Gnibbles, Gnorma, Gnicky and Gnarla – arrive at the Asda store and get to work turning it into a Christmas wonderland. 

The ad features many products within Asda’s festive offer, including its ‘Exceptional’ mince pies, a George ombre sequin dress, penguin bao buns and a gingerbread gnome.

With the sun coming up, chief Gnome, Max, announces, “It’s time to go Gnome”, as the team set off in Asda delivery vans, leaving the store ready for Christmas. 

The film ends with Chris Rea’s Christmas classic, with the lyrics adapted to ‘Driving Gnome for Christmas’.

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Asda chief customer officer David Hills said: “Asda’s gnomes are long standing favourites with our customers and they were staring us in the face as the obvious characters for our Christmas campaign – a very Asda way for us to showcase our breadth of offer.

“Our priority is to make sure our customers can have their best Christmas possible with great quality food, general merchandise and amazing George clothing and home items all under one roof.”

The ad made its debut on the supermarket’s social media on Saturday (2 November) and will air on TV for the first time on Wednesday 6 November at 8.15pm, during the Coronation Street ad break.

It comes as a raft of supermarkets have launched their Christmas ads in recent days, including Sainsbury’s BFG-themed ad, the return of Morrisons’ singing oven gloves, and Aldi’s latest outing of Kevin the Carrot.