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 printedin 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

## **See also**

Coca-Cola

John Lewis

Sainsbury's

Edeka Group

M&M's

## **References**

1. ↑ William J. Stanton(1984) *«Fundamentals of Marketing»,* McGraw-Hill , pp.465
2. ↑ Peter Clarke, (2007) *"A*
measure for Christmas spirit", *Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 24*
Issue: 1, pp.8-17
3. ↑ *“Christmas adverts around*
the World, *www.euronews.com, 15 December 2015*
4. ↑ *“6*
holiday ads that have stood the test of time”, *www.marketingdive.com,*
18 December 2014
5. ↑ “*The 10*
best Christmas adverts of all time”, *www.telegraph.co.uk,*
31 October 2017
6. ↑ “*John*
Lewis Christmas adverts: watch and rank them all”, *www.telegraph.co.uk, 9*
November 2017
7. ↑ *“Forget John Lewis, this is*
the saddest Christmas ad you'll ever see”, *www.theguardian.com, 1 December 2015*
8. ↑ *“It’s not just a Christmas ad”,* www.theguardian.com, 9 December 2016
9. ↑ *“The Dangerous Power of Emotional*
Advertising”, *www.contently.com, 14 April 2016*
10. ↑ *“John*
Lewis Christmas advert 2015: Five emotionally manipulative techniques behind
the Man on the Moon”, *www.independent.co.uk, 6 November, 2015*
11. ↑ *“Christmas adverts: Marketing*
techniques you can learn from”,
www.startups.co.uk, 10 November 2016
12. ↑ *“John Lewis Christmas advert: The*
emotionally manipulative techniques behind Buster the Boxer” *, www.independent.co.uk, 10 November 2016*
13. ↑ *“Emotional advertising – the John*
Lewis ad 2016”*, www.marketing-sciences.com, 10 November 2016*
14. ↑ *“John Lewis Christmas advert: The*
emotionally manipulative techniques behind Buster the Boxer” *, www.independent.co.uk,*
10 November 2016
15. ↑ *“The John Lewis Christmas ad:*
Marketers react”, *www.marketingweek.com, 10 November 2016*
16. ↑ *“John Lewis Christmas advert*
2015: Five emotionally manipulative techniques behind the Man on the Moon”, *www.independent.co.uk,*
6 November, 2015