Although our days are shorter in winter months, early sunsets bring about twinkling lights, hot cocoa by warm fireplaces, and holiday music everywhere we go. Christmas is definitely in the air now. At GMD, we’ve been in Holiday marketing mode for a few weeks already and we are just getting started. In the spirit of the festive season, here are a few fun Holiday campaigns to get you inspired.
1. Google: Santa Tracker
Google’s Santa Tracker is one of the brand’s flagship holiday traditions and has evolved into a delightful site experience, which is cleverly labeled as the Village in the URL.
Before December 24th, when the Santa Dashboard goes live and the site becomes the true Santa Tracker experience, users get a preview of what the elves are up to in the village. The site is packed with online games and activities: watch animated stories, learn how to code a snowflake, play Santa Search and Wrap Battles.
This is a brilliant brand experience geared towards kids – and kids-at-heart – which teaches its audience about the web in a fun and engaging way. Read about the back story here.
2.Starbucks Red Cups
Another well-known brand tradition is the Starbucks red cups, which is released with anticipation every holiday. For loyal customers, the red cup drop means that Christmas has arrived to their Starbucks lifestyle.
Every year, the brand launches a different cup design, but one year, a simplistic red cup design caused outrage within its fanbase. This was the beginning of a campaign in which Starbucks ran a competition that encouraged customers to customize their plain red cup and share pictures of their cups on social media. The following year, the company produced red cups designed by customers from around the world. This is the type of strategy that has us all perpetually waiting to see what the brand does next.
View this post on InstagramCreated with 💚 by you! No matter how you celebrate, we all share one spirit. #RedCups
3. Sonos/Spotify Playlist Potluck
The overall concept is simple. Spotify users invite their friends to an event by sharing their potluck playlist and then allow the friends to add their own songs to the list for the night. The functionality is built from Spotify’s existing collaborative playlists, but included a fun twist where the event creator can only add five songs to the playlist. From there, they must turn it over to a guest to add more.
Build your playlist potluck here.
Global usage data from the Playlist Potluck site was also compiled, visualized, and publicly released. Check it out to see where Canadian music taste falls next to other countries: http://polygraph.cool/playlistpotluck/
