Christmas campaigns have become a phenomenon in marketing communication. Whereas in the past the focus was mainly on gift ideas for the festive season, now a lot of brands are pushing the envelope during Advent and usually also the tear-jerker, because the opportunity to open wallets and smoothly part people from an extra portion of their money must not be allowed to pass by unused due to seasonally open hearts and the cocktail of emotion, melancholy and sentimentality that is always within reach.
Let's not get too hung up on the fact that Christmas is a Catholic holiday, given the potential turnover, shall we?
Generally speaking, the question is whether you should do what everyone else is doing or not do it for that very reason. Both are true, provided you do the right thing. I remembered a sentence by Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid : "No good to fight. But if must fight ... win!"
That doesn't get any easier over the years, because the thematic spectrum is not too broad: giving, taking time, family, love, togetherness, thinking of others, not forgetting the weakest, contemplation, opening the heart, spreading peace and tranquillity, shining children's eyes ... that pretty much covers everything that dangles from the Christmas tree.
But that doesn't matter. Smart people have to come up with something new, otherwise what do we have them for? This problem also exists elsewhere: it is estimated that a good 90 per cent of literature and pop music is already about love, and presumably all kinds of things will still appear that we don't know yet ...
Attention: The idea trap is ready! Or: What you should not do in your Christmas campaign!
Don't fall in love with an emotional idea and don't let yourself be blinded by the emotion. Because, as always, the eternal mantra applies: an idea is not yet good just because it is an idea. And a good idea is not yet useful just because it is good. Amen.
The best thing for the advertising creatives on earth, where we humans are, is to write that down in big letters and hopefully think about it at least next year. This year they obviously didn't.
The amount of money pumped into Christmas campaigns, especially in the form of films, leaves me speechless, as it does every year. What makes me even more speechless, however, is how much of it mercilessly misses the target, rushing straight into the canal of all that is forgotten. Communicative stun grenades are fired that it is a joy.
Frank Sinatra once said, "Las Vegas is the only place I know where money can talk - it says: 'Goodbye'." Ol' Blue Eyes obviously didn't know advertising.
I don't think there is another industry, apart from the advertising industry, in which so many highly talented, intelligent, creative people, at the cost of enormous amounts of money, strive day in, day out - excuse my French - with all their might to produce worthless crap. And they've been at it for months. Hallelujah!
Not even a Christmas miracle will help.
What makes a good Christmas campaign?
If you want to have a successful Christmas campaign, there are a few basic rules that apply all year round. There is no Christmas amnesty just because it is so beautifully emotional.
- Activate your brand story, i.e. the core values of your brand, in everything you do.
- Share the common history (= the common values) of you and your audience.
- If a product or service appears, then this thing must play an active role, e.g. enable or trigger or connect something or ...
- The acid test: If you can't logically show your brand's claim or mission statement as a continuation of the story at the end, your story is not right, without exception. - Think ahead! Make it new!
The endurance test is something damn mean. It aims at what I call intended audience response : What do you want your audience to have understood after coming into contact with your performance and to play back to you in a - also fictitious - qualitative market research? Something of your values must be present in image campaigns. What else?
The best Christmas campaigns 2018
In the last few weeks, I have watched countless domestic and international Christmas commercials, without any claim to completeness. Almost every film was excellently produced and directed, there was no skimping. Many of the films showed adorable stories with the highest emotional factor, often also very well told.
However, I did not come across a single one that was really well thought out, because practically not a single production staged or activated the brand values.
At the latest, when the acid test - the brand's mission statement as a continuation of the story - comes up, everything buckles.
The vast majority are so far removed from their brand values and their brand story that they even refrain from writing the claim under the logo. They have to do without it.
Why do these companies do this?
There are different assumptions about this. I think the closest to the truth is that they do it for the same reasons dogs lick their testicles: because they can.
Of course, these films also measure success. Click rates, shares and likes and Christmas emotion and sympathy and awareness and ... - But, what for?
Most of these brands have an awareness level on the 100-percent border anyway and likeability ratings like Donald Trump with the Ku Klux Klan. There is no need for improvement.
Brand values, on the other hand, cannot be activated often enough. Activate! That's why you do image campaigns.
A gift is more than a gift.
This year, I have only come across two performances that actually do something at least halfway for the brand and its values.
Once there was an animated film by the Austrian "Erste", which developed #glaubandich as a communication mission from the brand mission "A bank that believes in people". This resulted in the really well-made film Believe in Christmasthat pays in here, although it is already pretty far away from anything that can be associated with banking in the broadest sense. But so be it ...
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In the concert of eagerly awaited Christmas spots, John Lewis & Partners traditionally set the tone. This year, it's the second appearance I know of that actually does something for the brand, although not really because ...
In a journeythrough timeto Your Song we accompany superstar Elton John through his life back to his childhood, to that Christmas morning when he, then still as little Reginald Dwight, received his first piano. Then the claim A gift is more than a gift.
https://youtu.be/mNbSgMEZ_Tw
For those with a fine grasp of the English language, the double meaning of gift as gift and gifting rings a little bell. And if you dig a little further - or know it anyway as a native of England - you will also know the programme Bringing Skills to Life by John Lewis, with which the company promotes the talents of children through various measures, for example through music.
Theoretically, this closes the circle to Elton John's piano, the Christmas gifts and the offers in the shops, which could be more than just a gift - namely an inspiration for life.
Admittedly, this is a rather sophisticated idea, but it would be a wonderful way to get out of the banality of the eternally hypocritical Christmas pandering between Oh You're Merry . .. and consternation advertising and actually go into the brand values and the product, while at the same time even sticking an inspirational candy in the beard of the shopping-hungry Father Christmas.
The Little Triple Three for Brand Purpose.
If you don't want to get stuck halfway with your brand story, then please write down "The little three times three for brands with story power" on a piece of paper and pull it out at the latest when you are working on your new Christmas campaign. By the way, this also applies if you're not making a film with Elton John, but are baking small biscuits, and not just at Christmas time, but all the time.
- Your brand purpose must be an authentic concern for your company: Would you also stand up for it without it bringing immediate advertising benefits to your brand?
- A brand purpose must contribute to the benefit of your audience.
- Your audience can and must be activated and not remain passive observers. In this way, it becomes a supporting part of the brand purpose.
If you inspire your audience with things that are useful in their lives, then you don't have to desperately pursue them, people will come to you. The prerequisite for this is that your brand activates the next three simple principles:
- Which core value do I address in a sustainable way, i.e.: which longing of people do I share?
- How can I satisfy and nourish this longing in equal measure?
- What can I stimulate, distribute or initiate so that people care enough to pass it on because it tells them more about themselves than about me?
As before, however, no one is interested in your story, but only and exclusively in their own. Therefore:
- Your story can never be about your brand and must always be about your audience and their values and aspirations.
- Your brand is not the hero, your brand has to make its users the hero.
- For your brand to get quality time with its audience, it has to be relevant. That means ... (see 1).
The basic prerequisite for this is often a new attitude in the company itself and not just a lot of young people with Snapchat accounts in the marketing department. This starts with the company management and includes all departments, especially of course marketing, sales, service and first and foremost human resources - keyword: employer branding.
Brand storytelling is more than just advertising in the guise of Santa Claus, or a tin full of emotional gingerbread, otherwise it doesn't work.
It's about the shared desires and the interweaving of the values of brand and audience. Then the brand also already holds back and activates much more every possible platform as a stage for the people.
You have that chance with every performance, and if John Lewis had thought his story through, the good people could have put it together quite easily. It's all ready to hand on the gift table.
Here's my idea for your successful Christmas campaign.
Already for the Letter to the Christ Child 2019, here's a thought I'm throwing out into the Story Insider crowd as a gift to get ideas flowing in the right direction.
Doesn't Christmas - uniting all denominations and cultures - have a very strong inner symbolic power and a value-based story that we should remember? Namely: With every child that is born, the chance is also born for this world to become a little better.
So Christmas tells the story of hope.
This is our common story: the living hope for a better world.
And: every individual can change the world for the better. Strictly speaking, nothing has ever worked other than an individual setting himself in motion and inspiring others.
A gift is more than a gift. Some people change the world with it, provided they get the chance. Sometimes that chance looks like a piano ...
If you now manage to interpret this value and connect it with the values of your brand, your company, then you have ignited the spark of your special powerful Christmas story.
Ask yourself: How can hope actually be experienced in the context of my brand, my company, my service? If you crack this nut, you have the perfect story. If you tell it excellently, you will also have an effective story that resonates with people and creates a response.
With this you meet a burning longing of the people of our time.
We need encouraging stories - not only at Christmas.
Our disturbing, confusing times need stories, storytellers and more: story sharers who help people find clarity and orientation and inspire them to build their own stories of hope for a tomorrow in which we are all better off than we are today, with shared values. All of us.
The ability to tell stories has been programmed into us humans by evolution. This wondrous ability is one of our most powerful tools.
The good thing is that each of us has this ability and the principles of story are very simple and universally valid, across generations and cultures. This is how Neanderthal man eventually became Homo sapiens - Homo narrans - Homo ludens - Homo faber ...
Stories bring us respectfully into conversation with our audience - if the story is relevant to both. That's how it's done today, beyond advertising.
The effective success of storytelling - or even better: storysharing - is not a question of company size at all, but simply a question of attitude and, below the line, an indispensable necessity for successful communication.
Regardless of whether it's a global corporation, an SME/small and medium-sized enterprise, or a heroic lone fighter as an EPU/one-person business - every person, every brand, every company needs a story and must stand for something. If not, you are left with only one issue, one way or another: the price. And then it will soon be time for you to fast, and not just during Advent.
To all those who say: "It won't work with me and my brand!", I would like to recommend the words that my grandmother, the old Story Dudette, threw into the firmament of the Three Wise Men as a comet-like guiding star: "No Story. No Glory."