Christmas Campaigns: Planning For Success

This time of year, many companies and nonprofit organizations are in the process of planning their Christmas campaigns. And for good reason: Christmas campaigns are some of the most important of the year.

Today, we are going over why you should be running Christmas campaigns, how you can effectively plan and execute one, and examples you can learn from.

Let’s get started.

Why Christmas Campaigns Are Important

Simply put, Christmas campaigns make you money.

That’s because there is a huge increase during December in both spending and donating. People are simply in the right mood to spend money, which makes Christmas campaigns some of the most profitable campaigns you will have throughout the year.

This holds true across many industries, regardless of whether you are a company or nonprofit organization. ​​In fact, Christmas campaigns are often second to only Black Friday promotions.

As for what that means for your company or nonprofit? If you don’t have a plan for running effective Christmas campaigns, you are simply missing out.

4 Tips For Planning Christmas Campaign

So, the most important question of all: how do you actually plan a successful Christmas campaign?

If you want to have successful results, here are four tips to keep in mind. 

1) Start planning as early as possible.

Just as we pointed out in our guide to a successful Black Friday, it’s important to start planning as early in advance as possible.

This involves a lot of “working backward.” What is it you are trying to achieve with your Christmas campaign? How are you going to get there, and who exactly is going to be involved?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself now. Sit down with your team and figure out who needs to do what…and when.

Only by preparing in advance can you take advantage of this highly profitable time. 

2) Use emotional marketing.

The fact is, Christmas is a time that’s important to a lot of people. Even if your audience isn’t particularly religious, now is a time in which many experience heightened emotions of community or togetherness.

Typical marketing campaigns that stress the usefulness of a product (and forget to focus on the emotional impact instead) likely won’t perform as well as they normally would.

This can be difficult to adapt to for many companies, especially in the B2B industry.

However, you can also use it to your advantage. For some ideas of how to use emotions most effective in your marketing, check out this guide by HubSpot.

3) Get festive.

Related to emotions is the strategic use of “festivity.” It’s Christmas. Nobody wants to sit through boring ads that miss the mark or campaigns that treat December like any other time of the year. 

Maybe you give your website a Christmas theme. Maybe you use blog post header images that implement Christmas images. Regardless, you need to remember that you are running Christmas campaigns. It pays to have a little fun.

Still, even if your Christmas campaigns are festive and engaging, that’s no guarantee they look different than what everybody else is doing. This leads to the next point…

4) Be different.

One thing is certain about Christmas campaigns: you won’t be the only one running one.

Just as with Black Friday, your audience is likely being bombarded with marketing and fundraising messages. Their inboxes are full and they have a world of buying options right at their fingertips. Add to this the fact that many people will likely be repeat buyers from the same company, and it’s easy for your Christmas campaigns to get lost in the crowd.

It’s important if you want to stand out from the crowd (and drive sales) to differentiate yourself.

As for how exactly you do this? Continue on to our last section for some examples in action.

Examples of Christmas Campaigns

Thankfully, when it comes to successful Christmas campaigns, there are plenty of examples you can learn from. Let’s look at three of them now. While all three of them are in video format, the lessons are applicable to just about any Christmas campaign you might run. 

1) White Christmas by Coca Cola

In 2014 Coca Cola set up a video connection between outdoor screens in Finland and Singapore. Whenever people in Finland put snow in a container attached to their screen, a snow machine would be activated on the Singapore side. 

This experiment, later turned into a campaign, was successful because it brought people together. It connected strangers through emotions and positioned Coca Cola as a company that really cared.

2) Santa Crashes Christmas by Aldi

In this ad, Santa crashes in Australia and is helped by the people there. They rebuild his sleigh to help him again deliver presents. 

This ad campaign works because it’s a fun and lighthearted way of presenting some of the most common themes of Christmas: kindness and helpfulness. It’s also simple in the way it is presented, which ensures it appeals to as many people as possible. 

3) Share Your Gifts by Apple

This ad by Apple shows a girl who works as a baker during the day, but spends her free time writing a book. It’s only when the printed pages accidentally fly through the window that people see her work and she realizes how much they like it. 

The effectiveness of this ad comes from how it addresses a near universal feeling: the fear of showing our hidden talents. This serves to connect with the viewer in a way that is appropriate for the Christmas season.

Are you an enterprise, nonprofit or small business looking for help on your website? Give us a shout! We provide a free consultation. Email us at info@lughstudio.com or call us at (718) 855-1919!

Back to blog