A Lookback At the 5 Best Christmas Ad Campaigns of 2023
Once again, it’s the holiday season! Christmas 2023 is here, which means that snowmen, reindeer, and Santa Claus have also arrived. And it also means that Christmas advertisements are in their prime! This is the time of year when investing a penny in a Christmas advertisement yields substantial returns. Big and small brands alike view the Christmas season as a unique chance to engage with their customers and win over their hearts with the genuine spirit of the occasion.
These advertisements convey tales that encapsulate the charm and coziness of the holiday season, making them more than just commercials. This year, love, kindness, and unity were the main themes. So without further ado, let’s check out 2023’s top Christmas ad campaign!
Hangover Whopper: Burger King’s Hangover Cure
During the Christmas season, Burger King Brazil, in partnership with the creative brains at DM9 agency, launched the ‘Hangover Whopper‘ campaign to cater to those who may have overindulged in the celebrations. Burger King Brazil’s “Hangover Whopper” is designed to coincide with end-of-year celebrations, which are frequently characterized by late nights and difficult mornings. It links the delivery of fast food to a time when it’s most needed: during a hangover. The fast-food restaurant chain did this by using facial recognition technology to prevent hangover food.
The promotion delivers a matching combo coupon for the Whopper Jr. Double, Whopper, or Whopper Double based on a person’s “hangover level,” which is determined by facial recognition technology. A Whopper is designed to cure in addition to providing post-drinking nourishment. The suggested mix and discount provided increase with the degree of hangover. BK is satisfying customer desires and bringing a lighthearted touch to the holiday hangover experience with its creative campaign that integrates facial recognition technology. It’s a fun and unique way to eat your favorite Burger King sandwiches while recovering from the festivities.
Read More: An Innovative Triumph: Burger King x Stevenage FC Case Study
The World Needs More Santas: Coca-Cola Ad Campaign
The 2023 Coca-Cola Holiday Film is set in a bustling city filled with hundreds of Santas instead of the typical people! These Santas are shown in the commercial assisting individuals in little but significant ways, going above and beyond simply bringing presents. However, these Santas are only regular folks who display their “Inner Santa” by being giving and compassionate. The phrase “The World Needs More Santa’s” appears at the end of the video, reminding us that we may all embody the spirit of Santa via small deeds of kindness.
Coca-Cola and Christmas go hand in hand
Within the realm of holiday-themed advertising, Coca-Cola and Santa Claus have a unique relationship. Christmas advertisements for Coca-Cola have long been a holiday tradition, known for their capacity to inspire amazement, warmth, and happiness. The film explores the concept of what it means to be a “Santa.” Two things in particular stick out:
- The ad instantly establishes an emotional connection with the viewer by emphasizing small deeds of kindness.
- The brand maintains realism and relatability by using actual people and real-life situations.
These two elements give the brand a human touch and capture the essence of Christmas and Santa Claus. Additionally, the brand has chosen an admirable inclusive representation. This Coca-Cola commercial is one of the cutest of 2023 and is really uplifting!
Santa’s Cookie Overload Nightmare: Frito Lays
Is it unreasonable for Santa to request some savory munches? Father Christmas isn’t afraid to express his displeasure about constantly being left out cookies in the Frito-Lay festive area. The typically cheery present giver is actually so tired of the sweets that he’s having unsettling dreams about them. In his nightmare, an army of living gingerbread men overthrows him and flips him into the ground.
Savory Christmas
Is switching to potato chips going to help? Probably not, though. If nothing else, it would be a refreshing change of pace, as Rethink ironically demonstrated in their debut piece for Lay’s, a division of Frito Lay Canada. Santa is shown in the hero 60 secs ad below becoming slightly insane from cookie overload and going into a hallucinatory nightmare before being saved during one of his stops by a generous-hearted homeowner who loves Lay’s. At last, he finds relief when a father who is munching at midnight offers him some chips. Fortunately, Santa comes to his senses and has a Frito-Lay snack for himself before continuing to deliver gifts throughout the evening.
Frito-Lay Canada provided information for the commercial, implying that some people find the holidays to be a bit too sugary. During the holidays, 68% of Canadians occasionally crave something other than sweets, and over one-third really prefer savory food. The campaign began with an open letter from Santa Claus that appeared in national newspapers, expressing his request for something delicious to be served during the holidays. The advertisement is backed by out-of-home, digital, online, social, and national broadcast buys.
Joy is Shared: Amazon
Amazon’s Christmas ad from 2023 is evoking strong emotions this season. The commercial, which is part of a worldwide marketing campaign named “Joy is Shared,” depicts the story of enduring friendship and finding joy in the little things in life. The company’s most recent seasonal blitz revolves around a 60-second commercial called “Joy Ride.” It features three elderly women seated on a park bench outside. They observe kids and teenagers sliding down a hill in a sight that seems to take them back to their early years. Later, on a joyful hike down the hill, one of the women places an order on Amazon for seat cushions. The three of them then slide together as memories from the past begin to clear.
A Christmas Significance
The promo is part of Amazon’s internal creative team’s integrated “Joy is Shared” campaign. The ad demonstrates that certain pleasures endure a lifetime. It fuses the past and present with an instrumental rendition of the Beatles’ “In My Life.” With marketers realizing that today’s consumers need to prioritize their health and well-being, the joy topic has become increasingly prominent in the past year. Offering happy moments can assist businesses in connecting on a deeper emotional level with their target audiences; storytelling is an excellent method to do this. The emotionally charged content may strike a chord with viewers who are concerned about how rising prices may affect their Christmas plans.
Apple’s Fuzzy Feeling
Apple is well-known for its touching holiday adverts, and the company’s campaign this year is among its best. An excellent ad with a compelling story, excellent graphics, and a liberal dose of emotion. Apple’s 2023 holiday commercial is gaining popularity because it features all of them.
The Fuzzy Feeling Christmas Campaign
The nearly four-minute short, “Fuzzy Feelings,” portrays the story of a young woman who has a cranky manager. To get out of the situation, the office worker uses her artistic abilities to utilize her iPhone. She creates a stop-motion picture featuring that grumpy manager. The main character records her boss on a tiny scale in several scenarios. It includes him getting hit by a car, falling into ice rivers, and even getting snowed on. The woman starts to understand why the irritable man is acting so coldly as the ad goes on because the live-action pictures show a different side to him.
The soundtrack for the film is George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity” and it alternates between live-action and stop-motion scenes. While many corporations are going for humor during this holiday season, Apple has chosen a completely different approach. It is touching people’s emotions with its holiday advertisement. Regarding the movie, it’s heartfelt without being overly sweet, skillfully balancing on the verge of sentimentality. Furthermore, there is no sense of constraint in the design of the MacBook Air and iPhone 15 Pro Max. It seems that Apple is carrying on its annual tradition of releasing holiday flicks with Fuzzy Feelings.
Read More: Apple Tests Generative AI, A Potential Rival To ChatGPT Emerges
An Innovative Triumph: Burger King x Stevenage FC Case Study
This case study looks into the Burger King x Stevenage Football Club campaign that was so innovative and fresh, that it left a lasting impression on the minds of the fans even after years.
Introduction
The Stevenage Football Club is a humble League Two Team. In the lowest division (D4) of the English soccer league’s four divisions, Stevenage finished second to bottom. In essence, it was a team that the general public knew little about. However, it rose to prominence in FIFA ’20, courtesy of a successful marketing and business strategy implemented by the fast-food company Burger King.
A Sneak Peek
Every year, a new instalment of the FIFA video game series is released. FIFA’s video games are incredibly realistic. They expertly mimic football stadiums, press meetings, and individual football players’ physical characteristics. FIFA is very attentive to the jerseys and the logo that is shown on them.
Objective
To promote its brand, Burger King wanted to sponsor a football team and have their trademarks shown on the players’ uniforms. The goal was to turn a small-time squad into one of the top online sports organizations in the world. They would receive the most exposure by doing this. However, bankruptcy was the one thing they wished to avoid.
Challenges
Burger King moved their attention to the virtual world while the real Stevenage Club received very little publicity. The season that would have resulted in the Stevenage Football Club’s downfall was stopped by COVID-19, making them the least fortunate English team in all of FIFA ’20. They would not have been able to participate in the game at all.
An Unprecedented Deal
In soccer, branding holds significant value due to the extensive fanbase. Burger King endorsed Stevenage Football Club in 2019, showcasing its logo on the team’s shirts, which also featured in FIFA ’20. This partnership offered the burger chain exposure to a vast audience through the team’s official jersey in the game.
Creative Idea
The answer they proposed? online game. FIFA, more precisely!
With this ground-breaking sponsorship, FIFA’s virtual world saw the real-world shirt marketing gimmick transposed. The target audience changed to FIFA players and viewers of Twitch streams rather than spectators cheering in a stadium or watching the games on television. Burger King intended to breach the system by sneaking their logo into the game. And they did so in two stages:
- Sponsor a team that would
- Appear in the FIFA 2020 edition
- Not cost a dozen million per year
- Matching jersey colors
- Find a way to draw attention to the team. With the introduction of the social media challenge, they were able to accomplish this.
Players in FIFA can select a career mode. They can act out the part of a club manager starting a multi-season career there. Choose a weaker club and push it to the top as one strategy for this mode. The Stevenage Challenge was focused on just this.
Image credit- Muse by Clio
The Stevenage Challenge
In FIFA’s career mode, players step into the role of a club manager for a multi-season journey. Burger King’s ‘Stevenage Challenge’ encouraged gamers to choose the underdog, Stevenage, and score goals while offering rewards for meeting specific criteria, such as winning a free menu item by scoring directly from a corner kick and sharing the achievement on social media.
Image credit- Muse by Clio
Image credit- BeSoccer
The underdog concept embodied the players’ interest in playing as Stevenage, the team stranded at the bottom of the standings. Additionally, online accomplishments would deliver free hamburgers to your door. It turns out that the challenge was released at the same time as BK joined forces with Uber Eats. For the roughly 10 million FIFA ’20 gamers, having the meal brought to them proved the challenge even more alluring. The concept successfully merged the internet and offline worlds. It’s possible that BK even started the offline partnership with Stevenage in order to launch the online concept. Additionally, it made use of common user behavior: many FIFA players love playing the smaller clubs.
Results
It was a success! Whooper’s owners claim-
- Over 25,000 goals were scored and shared online while wearing an SFC jersey.
- Even in the career mode of the game, when users acquire the best players to develop under this shirt wearing the BK insignia, SFC was the most frequently used team.
- For the first time in SFC’s 43-year history, there was a lack of jerseys on hand.
- It claimed earned media revenue of $2.5M.
- 1.2 billion campaign impressions
Previously unknown Stevenage had enormous prominence in the gaming industry and made money off of a few shirts. BK increased its exposure, received marketing honors, and increased its stake in Uber Eats.
More significantly, in a world that often depicts them in gloomy tones, gamers felt respected and understood. Everyone achieved which is possibly why BK chose to continue on the same path even further. Burger King increased the scope of its sponsorship agreement in 2020 to include the Stevenage women’s squad. A Burger Queen shirt and a successful marketing campaign were the results.
Match of the day host and high profile personality in the football realm, Gary Linekar, and Rugby World Cup Winner Bryan Habana were among the sporting names who praised the campaign.
🔙 Throwback to the #StevenageChallenge, turning a small team in the real world to the biggest online. 💪 pic.twitter.com/2MpU7XCMh0
— Stevenage FC 🔴⚪ (@StevenageFC) May 21, 2021
Great numbers for the #stevenagechallenge by @BurgerKing. pic.twitter.com/ydioTRDlCd
— FANexperience👏 (@FanexperienceNL) September 26, 2020
Burger King’s daring strategy of partnering with a lesser-known squad for their campaign paid off with resounding success. This creative approach showcased alternative avenues for businesses to connect with their target markets, earning Burger King significant accolades and boosting the popularity of SFC in FIFA!
