Advert has me thinking of the 'C' word in June

Suddenly, I was jolted into life. "It's so important to make someone happy..." crooned the unmistakeably mischievous, gravelly tones of veteran Jimmy Durante.

Now I know the weather's been all topsy-turvy in recent weeks (snow in mid-May, frost in early June, what's that all about?), but the marketing minds at travel company Hotels.com appear to have been struck down by a nasty case of seasonal affective disorder.

This is a Christmas song, surely! To me, the cheerful ditty by the legendary 'schnozzle' conjures up images of catalogue model families dressing their festive trees, while a chilled glass of eggnog rests peacefully on the mantelpiece above a roaring log fire.

It's as wrong as dusting off Jona Lewie or Johnny Mathis at the summer barbecue.

My fury, however, brought blank looks. Fearing I'd completely lost the plot, I plunged into the world wide web in search of affirmation.

Sure enough, there it was, by the bucketload.

First up, Boots used the tune in its CHRISTMAS marketing campaign of 1999, filling our screens with fuzzy images of children wrapping presents, reindeer in the snow, turkey in the oven, and dads with dodgy jumpers.

Vodafone did the same for its random acts of kindness TV commercial at CHRISTMAS 2011, saying: "We know it's the little things people do at this time of year which can make someone happy."

And there's more. The song was hand-picked for the soundtrack of last year's animated movie Arthur CHRISTMAS, and Paul 'Wherever I Lay My Hat' Young even recorded a cover of it for – you've guessed it – a CHRISTMAS special back in 1997. (Don't bother, it's shocking).

So what does all this prove, other than the fact that I'm right, and the brains behind the latest commercial are patently bonkers!

Well, it highlights the power of TV ad campaigns to give a song a new and unexpected lease of life, whatever the time of year.

Indie duo Matt & Kim went from near nobodies to 10 million views on YouTube when Daylight was featured in a Bacardi commercial, Babylon Zoo shot into orbit when the song Spaceman was chosen for a Levi's commercial, and it's impossible to hear Ellie Goulding's rebirth of Your Song without picturing the John Lewis festive ad campaign, or Andy Williams' The Impossible Dream without images of Honda's mad robotic professors flooding your head.

Then, of course, there's arguably the greatest coming-from-nowhere tune, Louis Armstrong's We Have All The Time In The World. When it was originally recorded for the soundtrack of Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it hardly created a murmur. But when Guinness plucked it out 25 years later, it hit number three in the charts and sparked renewed interest in the great Satchmo's back catalogue.

So thank you Hotels.com. If the objective of choosing Jimmy Durante was to make your ad campaign a talking point, you've succeeded.

I may even consider checking out your prices on the back of it – but out of principle, only when the Christmas market packages come along.

What? They're already available? Someone save me from this seasonal madness.

I blame global warming . . .