Holiday Advertising

Definition
Christmas advertising is a special form of advertising that should be used for promotion of goods, products or services during Christmas period. It is designed not only to sell a product, but more to create a special mood, a sense of wonder and a magical world in order to give people a faith that the story may become reality with the help of a product or service advertised by the company.

As a form of advertising, it is an audio or visual form of marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. The main purpose of the Christmas advertising is to attract the attention of a huge number of people, because Christmas and everything connected with it cause a positive emotion and affect their moods.

History of Christmas Advertising
In 1843, English businessman Sir Henry Cole commissioned artist John Calcott Horsley to produce the first printed Christmas Cards. The first Christmas cards printed in the United States were sent by businesses to their customers in the 1850s. Pease's Great Variety Store in Albany, New York was one of the first stores to use this form of advertising.

The late 1880s seemed to be a turning point for appropriating the Christmas season for commercial gains –  Even in the Chemist and Druggist appeared ‘Christmas prices,’ ‘Christmas Decoration,’ and ‘Suitable Christmas Presents.’

As ever, Burroughs Welcome & Co were at the forefront of marketing, and promoted their products at “special Christmas prices,” or specifically as Christmas presents.

An advertisement in 1910 for Ivory Soap showed a child waiting for Santa Claus in front of a fireplace with a bowl of water, a towel and a bar of Ivory soap so Santa could wash up after coming down the sooty chimney.

Robert May created Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1939 as a Christmas promotion for Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago. In 1931 the Coca-Cola Company commissioned artist Haddon Sundblom to show Santa drinking a Coke to encourage sales in the winter months. From 1931 to 1964 these annual ads became a Christmas tradition, and helped to reinforce the modern American image of Santa Claus (which had been forming since the early 1900s): a rotund, jolly and bearded man, dressed in a red outfit trimmed in white fur with a broad black belt and black boots.

This commercial focused solely on the benefits of its core product – a bottle of Coke. The 2-minute video is filmed inside only one room and includes only five people. It seems as though this ad was produced before Coca-Cola figured out a winning and memorable Christmas marketing strategy, with the subsequent Polar Bear and Christmas Truck commercials gaining a lot more popularity.

Taking a step forward to the 1960s era, TV adverts have once again made a huge leap with developments in video production and the increased use of animation. The 30-second low-budget video features a middle-aged woman opening a present on Christmas Day with the gift tag reading ‘To Mother’. Upon opening the box and realizing she is now the proud owner of a new cleaning device, she promptly gets to work on her duties.

Next up is the famous era of the 80's, which saw the invention of the CD-ROM, the cell-phone and jelly shoes. Honey Nut Cheerios released an ad in the later years of the decade, showing the Scrooge getting into an argument with a friendly bee. Scrooge, who is notoriously caught up in hating Christmas, is tempted into trying a spoonful of the cereal when his outlook is turned upside down. The animated bee mascot lives on to this day, recently seen on their packaging alongside various sponsored celebrities.

The 1990's saw the introduction of the DVD although the first DVD players didn’t come out until 1999. In the same decade, popular TV shows such as ‘Friends’ were first launched which at its peak, was watched by 52 million people. Supermarket giant Sainsbury’s launched this Christmas ad in the early 90's, starring a comical performance by John Cleese.

Jumping forward to current times, Christmas ads have become a major landmark in the year. You’ve probably heard the phrase “It’s not Christmas until I’ve seen the Coca-Cola advert”. As much as most Christmas ads are still based around festive joy and the coming together of people in friendship, it’s clear to see that campaigns are becoming increasingly emotional and compelling. Tugging at the heart strings, this year’s biggest release from the likes of John Lewis definitely fits these criteria, made only more passionate by their collaboration with Age UK.

Examples of Christmas Advertising
Christmas spirit is often given as a reason or excuse for the goodwill, generosity and altruism associated with the celebration of Christmas. The Christmas period is an important occasion, not just for business, but for those making purchases for participation in Christmas activities. Every year hundreds of Christmas adverts hit our TV screens, trying to draw in more and more customers. Companies spend millions of euros making the best Christmas advert. This year marks the 22nd anniversary since Coca-Cola 's Christmas trucks first appeared on TV screens, and the "Holidays are Coming" jingle has since become synonymous with the start of the festive period. If you were to ask someone to describe Coca-Cola’s Christmas ad, most would be able to do so in a heartbeat. Red trucks speed through a wintry landscape, lighting up towns as they go. The ad might be more than 2o years old, but interest in it shows little sign of diminishing as it brings out everyone’s nostalgic side. For many, Coca-Cola is indeed the brand that comes to mind when getting into the holiday spirit. This is more than reasonable, if not completely understandable, since Coca-Cola has been hard at work on branding themselves for the holidays since 1931, but it was 1951 to become turning in the history of Christmas advertising. The Coca-Cola Christmas trucks are created by agency W.B. Doner for a new seasonal advertising campaign. Known as ‘Christmas Caravans’, the illuminated lorries are made more enchanting with special effects by the world-famous Industrial Light and Magic, the company behind the Star Wars films. By 1998 The ‘Christmas Caravan’ advert is broadcast in more than 100 countries to millions of viewers. It remains one of the most widely used Coca-Cola commercials ever produced. What we should all learn from Coca-Cola is that the key to successful advertising is to advertise an emotion, feeling, or state of mind, rather than just a product. Sure you should probably mention your product somewhere along the line, but the important thing is to make people feel a certain type of way. Make it seem like your product will bring happiness, peace, love, or any number of positive feelings, and you will be giving Coke a run for their money in no time.

While the iconic and memorable commercial of M&M’s “Christmas Faint” - first aired in 1996 and features two well-known characters – Santa and the sassy, smart-talking M&M’s. The spot works so well because it incorporates two tried-and-true methods of good advertising – humour and nostalgia. It brings viewers back to a more innocent time when we all believed Santa was real – and maybe that M&M’s could talk.

In United Kingdom the festive season begins with the slew of Christmas adverts, including the all-important John Lewis Christmas advert. 2011 is remembered as the year that cemented John Lewis as the king of Christmas advertising, and the department store has faced increasing pressure to deliver bolder and better spots each year since. Set to Slow Moving Millie's cover of 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' by The Smiths, the ad does not even overtly feature any John Lewis products. One of the most used method what makes ads so successful is the sentimental story lines. Sainsbury’s also went for the sentimental approach by resurrecting Mog the Cat for its Christmas ad, which has had more than 37 million views on YouTube.

The ad released by German chain Edeka in 2015 was one of the most viewed and season’s biggest tear-jerker advertisement. In the ad, which has been viewed on YouTube almost 57 million times, a lonely old man comes up with drastic measures to bring his family together: he fakes his own death.

More than 14 million people from around the globe have watched 2016 year’s Christmas advertisement from Allegro, an online auction website in Poland. It features a grandfather, who orders an 'English for beginners' set from the website. In the final scene, he flies off to Britain to spend Christmas with his son’s family, where he meets his granddaughter for the first time, telling her: “Hi. I am your grandpa”.

Advertising Methods Used in Christmas Advertising
It is a well-known fact for neuroscientists, psychologists and marketing experts that emotion is at the heart of our decision-making. The latter also know that a great ad is all about eliciting emotions. Since holidays, especially Christmas, are emotionally involving events, advertisers use emotional ads to promote their brands and products. The core principle here is not to directly sell products to the viewer, but to establish an emotional connection with the shopper to reinforce the brand.

In order to create these sentimental engagements, advertisers use several most common techniques.

A story to remember
The advertising goal is to make an ad well memorized by the audience. Story telling achieves it easily. It is known that ads that make viewers smile or laugh are remembered the most. Advertising that brings together emotion, humour and everyday situations have been proved to work 15% harder than the average.

Thus, the story must awaken certain emotions, makes viewers empathize and feel in the way you want them to feel. Moreover, the plot must be interesting to follow: therefore, it is not only recognizable and memorable, but also highly shared and distributed through social network and media (web-users usually share what they find the most interesting) and, hence, provide much larger scale to the advertising campaign. The presence of intrigue inside the story makes the effect even stronger, because human "brains love a story, particularly including puzzles with question and answer patterns”.

==== Using animals and kids to boost emotional response ==== Since the target audience may be highly diverse, it is difficult to find a uniform object that elicits emotions of each person. However, kids and animals are a win-win, because they can cause an emotional response by almost every viewer.

A song to remember
Music is integral to the impact and success of an advertising campaign. If you consider what makes a Christmas ad really stand out and stick in people’s minds long after the spot has ended, it is often the music.

For example, soft female vocals work well for Christmas campaigns as they lend an intimate feel to a story and help build an emotional connection between the brand and consumer. A pleasing harmony and a lifting melody can boost serotonin, a chemical responsible for good feelings. In addition, the piano is the instrument of our childhood, it is how many songs begin, and it offers a childlike purity to the experience. Another way to awoke emotions through music is to use a song that everyone knows, for example a soundtrack to a famous movie or a music-hit.

A ‘feel good’ factor
Ads may provide the viewers with emotions they lack. For example, after ‘Brexit and Trump’ year, humourous and funny “BusterTheBoxer” by John Lewis became a "welcome relief". Therefore, an ad may provide a moment of escapism, warmth and a feel good factor to deliver the perfect antidote to let us say a “depressing year”.

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that these and many other advertising techniques are used in order to receive an emotional response from the audience and, thus, bind a brand and its potential customer. In general, these emotional engagements do not guarantee that an advertising-viewer will go to a Christmas sale, but they do help companies to create and maintain a positive image of themselves, which may trigger and bear fruit in the future, even long after Christmas ends.

Related articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_campaign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_advertising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertisement_film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%26M%27s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising