Christmas adverts 2015: What retailers must do to rival John Lewis when it comes to winning consumers’ hearts and minds
People around the country celebrate (or lament) the fact that Christmas seems to be starting earlier with each passing year.
Fairylights adorn high streets, the newest children’s toys fill up shop windows and festive sandwich flavours pop up in supermarkets, often before the Halloween decorations have even come down.
Love it or hate it, there’s a new phenomenon that’s gradually becoming a fixture of the festive season, teased as much as two months in advance of 25 December itself.
Watch: The 2015 John Lewis Christmas advert finally released
We’re talking about the viral Christmas video, defined by blockbuster hits like last year’s ‘Monty The Penguin’ or ‘Christmas is for Sharing’. Festive videos have gradually turned the Christmas season into UK advertising’s new Super Bowl. Or in other words, big big business.
Whether you devotedly followed 2014’s Christmas ad clash between John Lewis and Sainsbury’s, or simply saw the videos at your desk one afternoon, there is no denying their impact.
With nearly two million shares between them, these brands’ commitment to big-budget, story-focused advertising has set the precedent for all those trying to make a splash at Christmas.
Watch: The most shared Christmas adverts of all time
The major story of 2015 will be whether a challenger can unseat reigning festive champ John Lewis, whose last four spots all sit comfortably in the top 10 most shared Christmas ads of all time.
With just a few days before the release of John Lewis’ new ad, the busy elves at Unruly have compiled a handy guide to keeping your brand’s online video on Santa’s ‘nice list’ this festive season.
1. Make it emotional
Emotional engagement is vital for viral video campaigns throughout the year, but particularly at Christmas, when consumers are thinking with their hearts rather than their heads. After all, videos which elicit strong emotional responses are twice as likely to be shared than those which elicit weak emotional responses.
Previous Christmas campaigns are a perfect case study for this theory. While highly emotional work from John Lewis and Sainsbury’s regularly breaks online sharing records, ads focused on saving money fail to set the web alight.
2. Get into the Christmas spirit
Christmas is not a time for cynicism, but what works well? The happiness and warmth of the festive season? Of course. Surprise and excitement at opening presents and seeing loved ones? Sure. Nostalgia for all those Christmases you had a when you were a child? Definitely.
When we tested John Lewis’s Christmas No.1, Monty The Penguin, we found the ad ranked extremely highly for all these emotions.
Source: Unruly Custom Audiences
Warmth, in particular, driven in the ad by the relationship between the boy and his penguin, was a key emotion.
By tapping into the key emotions of Christmas – the feelings that are the most likely to resonate around that time of the year – John Lewis has managed to create a template for social video success.
3. Use paid views to drive shares
One of the biggest mistakes brands make when they are launching a video online is to think that good content will somehow rise to the surface no matter what.
It doesn’t work like that. There’s so much content in our social feeds these days, it’s harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. This is why it’s essential for brands to have a smart distribution strategy in place to make sure people are seeing their content.
Your distribution strategy is just as important as your content strategy. In fact, academic Dr Karen Nelson-Field, author of ‘Viral Marketing: The Science of Sharing’, recently suggested that when it comes to online video advertising “distribution is king and content is queen”.
4. Don’t hide your brand
Research has found here’s no relationship between how much sharing a video attracts and the level of branding it has. Nor does overt branding make a video less emotionally effective.
Don’t waste your budget pushing content out that no one knows you did. Or even worse, viewers think your competitors did.
5. Don’t waste your cash on celebs – celebrate the average Joes and Janes instead
The stars were certainly out last Christmas, with celebs including Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett, Ant and Dec, Romeo Beckham and even The Minions all appearing in festive ads.
However, how many do you think made it into the top 10 in 2014? Well, just two – a global ad featuring The Minions, which finished first (but I’m not entirely sure they count as celebs), and Romeo Beckham’s ad for Burberry, which was seventh overall.
In fact, a lot of the most popular Christmas ads last year featured just ordinary people, such as Tesco’s “Wigan Light Show”.
It was the same story the year before. The highest placed star-studded commercial was for M&S, which finished 11th overall in 2013, while, just like 2014, 2013’s high-climbers celebrated the average Joe or Jane, such as WestJet’s “Christmas Miracle”, Sainsbury’s “Homecoming” and Tesco’s nostalgic commercial “There’s Nothing Better Than Christmas”.