Why are holiday campaigns important?
The Holidays are always seen as the best time of the year, and it’s only getting better for business. Sales and specifically online sales have been skyrocketing in the last 15 years primarily during the holidays. For this reason, companies have been adapting and creating their strategy around holiday campaigns to make content more relevant to their audience. Some brands are better than others and some have cemented themselves as the best at it. These companies are taking advantage of an 8.5% growth for the holiday season which can be a major deal to small businesses. So to better understand how they do it, here’s 5 of the best holiday campaigns brands have used or still use.
1.) Coca-Cola
Coke has been one of the best at relating their own content to their audience during the holidays with their long running Christmas campaigns. Starting in 1931 coke commissioned an author to paint Santa Claus and it’s believed that it’s the original version we still use today. That’s 80 years of attention around Christmas time and they didn’t stop there. They’ve adapted a wintery/snowy campaign over the last few years using animated polar bears and penguins in their commercials around Christmas time. This makes people think of coke when it’s cold and around Christmas time. Also when customers see it they already relate to the Christmas time and the time of happiness which they then associate with coke. To get a little better feel here’s their best commercials throughout the years.
2.) Starbucks
Another highly successful campaign is Starbucks red cups. What they do here is take everyone’s love of hot beverages and add a splash of the holidays. Every holiday season they have a day where they give away a free reusable red cup that gets redesigned every year in a festive theme. In addition to the cup they do a special rewards giveaway. This is made relevant to the audience by adhering to the growing desire for sustainability and the constant desire for free stuff. Starbucks started this back in 1997 and now it’s gotten so big they have an annual countdown. This was a simple and sustainable way to make Starbucks very relevant every holiday season and grow their sales. Not only does it lead to more sales but more attention on social media and publicity.
3.) Macy’s
When you think of retail giants you got Walmart for groceries, Best Buy for appliances, and Macy’s for clothes and accessories. The one thing these giants never do is get comfortable in their strategy. Macy’s has done a great job of this with their Believe campaign. What they do in this is set up a way to write letters to Santa for kids. For every letter posted they send $1 to make-a-wish. This campaign is great for social media due to the reach it offers. Not only does this tie into consumers’ emotional appeal and desire to help but it also adds traffic to their site with each and every visit to write the letters.
4.) Google
The build-up to getting presents from Santa is something that sticks with kids into adulthood. This leads to some curiosity about where the big man might be. Google has capitalized on that curiosity by creating the Santa Tracker. Not only does this add traffic to their site but also allows them to inject themselves into holiday tradition. Kids will now go to their tracker every year to track Santa and therefore continuously bring in visitors every year. These additional visitors compiled with their 5.6 billion users a day can really generate some business and keep that business going in years to come
5.) Super Bowl Sunday
The rest of the brands discussed in this article focus on the holiday season campaigns (e.g.: Thanksgiving, Christmas). However it wouldn’t be fair to put all the focus on that. Super Bowl Sunday is a marketing masterpiece by the NFL. However thats not the important topic. What has become a cornerstone in business today is brands splurging for Super Bowl commercials. In 1984 Apple released the first of what we know now as Super Bowl commercials. They aired it once during the game and the sales that followed is the reason Super Bowl commercials are millions of dollars now. To put it into a little more perspective, a 30 second ad sold for $6million. Today most people would recognize iconic ones like the Budweiser clydesdales growing up through the years, or Snickers with celeb cameos, or Doritos taking the comedic approach. All these brands have their own Super Bowl campaigns that they’ll spend month preparing. What brings them all together though is the consistency. The audience is expecting these commercials and giving the people what they like is what they’re known for. As long as Super Bowl Sunday is around these brands will do what they do and connect with their audience on a much more relevant level than just airing the commercials regularly.
Last year over 96 million people watched the Super Bowl. All of the, were exposed to these ads
What these will do for you
These brands exemplify effective social media strategy. For a young company starting out, deploying one of these strategies can be the difference in a loyal customer and making a sale. Making the content relevant to the audience adds a level of relationship not normally present. It will build their anticipation, make them look forward to new campaign and add some form of trust. Making a campaign like this lets customers feel trusting because the people shown are everyday people just like them. Getting that level of relevance makes customers more likely to buy, to listen to what they’re being informed on, and most importantly.. COME BACK. Getting those customers to come back is crucial to a business’s success and this is a great way to do that.
Teaching Social Media 