Top 5 Christmas season campaigns

We are right in the middle of the Christmas season: lights, trees, special offers, gifts ... But do you know which Christmas campaigns have been the best in history? Well, take your notebook because we bring the top 5 Christmas campaigns of all times (almost nothing).

We go all the way back to the United States in the year 1870 (100 years before the first steps of the Internet). The head of the chain Macy’s hired the first Santa Claus to encourage sales and, a few years later, began to install a pre-lit tree in the store’s entrance.

Those same light bulbs that appeared over the heads of the companies’ marketing teams and with them the Christmas campaigns began to shine.

This US retail giant is very proud to be one of the driving forces behind seasonal sales since it’s really involved since the Thanksgiving parade to the sales, where similar riots occur.

In its long history, we can find several examples, but what made it stand out from the beginning was its window display. Remember that, at that time, the Internet didn’t exist, so they focused their resources on setting up beautiful Christmas scenes with its porcelain figures and their storytelling. A way to draw people to the store.

If there is a company that doesn’t need help selling its product by using emotions and lifestyle, that’s Coca-Cola.

It’s hard to imagine it now, but in 1930 Coca-Cola wasn’t the global phenomenon that it has been in the last decades. Somebody, quite intelligently, decided to give the Christmas sales a boost, and to do that, he “invented” Santa Claus and, of course, he was dressed in corporate colors.

The person in charge of redesigning this mythical and loved character was Haddon Sundblom in 1931 (later perpetuated by other great illustrators such as Norman Rockwell). And the redesign was such a success, that he also modified the universal collective imaginaire and made all brands adopt that image of Santa Claus.

The first toy announced on television, according to the historical records, was the mythical Mr. Potato Head (back in the day when it was actually a real potato).

This is the spot that Hasbro launched to the public in 1952 through the small screen. It combined animation with the real image of the product and, as pioneers, had an overwhelming success: Hasbro sold more than one million units with a price of $2, so, in fact, 2 million dollars.

We are going to take a huge leap in time and go to 2007. Another company which is becoming a great animator of this season is John Lewis.

We could say that it is the British version of Macy’s, or maybe the other way around.  A shopping center created in 1864 that remains fresh and full of vigor to this day. For communication purposes, and particularly for Christmas, it has made the public anxiously await for its ads. Somehow, it’s like giving it tradition status, since it seems that the people take the ad as the beginning of the season.

What has happened is that year after year social networks overflow with people reviewing and sharing John Lewis’ publications through the different social platforms.

Just take a look at Google Trends and you’ll see the peaks of people seeking proactively, not the products, but the advertising campaigns of John Lewis.

Last year they released a spot that era was more a short film than an ad. To give you an idea of the budget, just know that it was directed by Wes Anderson and starred by actor Adrien Brody.

Obviously, this campaign was not online-exclusive, but it was almost 4 minutes long, so the tv version had to be cut significantly.

This caused the 2006 spot/short to have about 10.200.000 views. What has H&M done this year? Replicate the strategy, clearly indicating in the tv spot that to see the full clip users need to go to the company’s social networks or website.

Well, what are the results? Well, bearing in mind that the video was uploaded to YouTube on December 8, 6 days before publishing this blog entry, it has already reached almost 14 million views.