The best of Christmas marketing
Christmas marks not just a Christian religious celebration but is also a festival of marketing as brands attempt to associate themselves with the festive cheer (and excessive consumption). Marketing Week looks at some of this year’s highlights away from the big budget TV campaigns.
Coke channels Christmas sweater zeitgeist
Picking up on the popular trend to look seasonally garish (but with a warm pleasant glow), Coke Zero has launched a social media campaign encouraging users to design their own Christmas sweaters, and then share the design via their social networks with the hashtag ‘#SweaterGenerator’. Technically, there’s nothing new here, but Coca Cola has again demonstrated its ability to tap into popular tastes.
Yet more sweaters
In other festive knitwear news, Budweiser is also attempting to get in on the festive cheer with a Twitter-powered knitting machine – dubbed Knitbot – that will produce more and more garments depending on the number of tweets it gets on the hashtag ‘#jumpers4des’. The campaign forms part of Budweiser’s bid to encourage groups of festive revellers to appoint designated drivers which runs with the strapline ‘Celebrate Responsibly’.
A very PC Christmas
Microsoft has launched an online video campaign imagining how Santa Claus would make his Christmas preparations, not with a team of elves but with its flagship desktop operating system Windows. The series of three videos was conceived by UM London and online video company Rockabox, and forms part of Microsoft’s ‘Honestly’ campaign that aims to show people how the Windows OS can be used for both ‘#workandplay’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYZWocka5o
Cadbury unwraps joy
Cadbury has been successful at embedding itself into the UK’s collective Christmas psyche, with boxes of Cadbury Roses as synonymous with Yuletide cheer as mulled wine and carol singing. And this year it has taken a different slant on the tradition of Advent calendars with an online version that asks users to guess the gift inside a wrapper and then share it with their social networks in order to enter a draw to win the mystery prize. This campaign runs with the hashtag ‘#unwrapjoy’.
The season for giving (this year that includes blood)
The Blood Donor Centre has also used the season to raise awareness of its worthy cause by staging a publicity stunt whereby a number of ‘Santa Clauses’ dressed in the figure’s traditional red and white queued outside its West End donor centre. However, a number of ‘Santa Clauses’ in white suits then exited the same building (indicating they’ve just donated blood), with the stunt not only drawing the attention of the passing hordes of Christmas shoppers, but also achieving notable traction on Twitter and Facebook (see pic).
Family Rock Out
InterContinental Hotel Group’s Holiday Inn aims to underline its family values to boost brand awareness with the launch of its karaoke app Family Rock Out, which encourages users to record themselves signing along to Christmas rock and roll classics. The app, designed by Naked Penguin Boy, also lets users post the videos of themselves to the Holiday Inn Rock Out Facebook wall, where they’ll be entered into a draw for over £1,000 worth of prizes. The campaign is fronted by ’celebrity mum’ Stacey Solomon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8zy9GHIMd8
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