5 Best Christmas Campaigns from 2023
Looking for marketing inspiration? Join us as we analyse the top 5 Christmas marketing campaigns of 2023 to identify the ingredients for marketing success.
5 Best Christmas Campaigns from 2023
Christmas is an incredibly important time for retailers, as the revenue boost from holiday sales can make or break a small business’ financial year. So, to ensure that Christmas has the appropriate impact, companies often spend a significant amount of money on their Christmas marketing campaigns.
In this article, we’ll examine some of the most successful Christmas marketing campaigns from 2023 to provide some inspiration for your 2024 Christmas campaigns. We’ll discuss the major themes in each campaign, and look at what smaller businesses can take away from these large-scale campaigns. Read on for more.
1. Asda: Make this Christmas Incredibublé
Asda’s 2023 campaign was a perfect example of celebrity endorsement both in front of and behind the camera. Singer Michael Bublé is the lead actor in the advert, which in itself is a great way to reinforce festive themes — Bublé has been closely associated with Christmas since his top-selling 2011 album (appropriately titled “Christmas”).
However, the other unseen celebrity endorsement in this advert is the director — the TV spot was filmed by Academy Award winner Taika Waititi. The use of such a prolific director is an interesting spin on celebrity endorsements, and a useful tip for businesses that can’t afford the same level of stardom in their marketing: to make the most of your Christmas campaigns, go to the experts.
While it’s unlikely that your business will be able to afford a Hollywood director or an internationally acclaimed singer, the core concept remains the same. Your festive marketing has a lot riding on it, so whether it’s a TV advert, a billboard campaign or a new brand app, make sure it’s developed by a team with experience and in-depth knowledge. If you don’t have those resources internally, consider outsourcing the job.
2. Coca-Cola: The World Needs More Santas
Much like Michael Bublé, Coca-Cola is intrinsically linked to the modern image of Christmas. They’re such a part of the festive period that a common misconception is that Coca-Cola’s advertising is the source of the iconic red Santa suit.
Coca-Cola leveraged this reputation in their 2023 Christmas campaign, “The World Needs More Santas”. The crux of the advert is the idea that everyone has the capacity to be a Santa to someone else and bring joy to others over the holiday season.
In this Christmas marketing campaign, Coca-Cola successfully uses its reputation and its association with familiar cultural touchpoints to create an emotional response in viewers. This is a key lesson for marketers to learn over the Christmas period: use the familiar to impact your audience, whether that familiarity is in your established reputation or in the imagery you use.
3. IKEA – Take a Holiday from the Holidays
IKEA used their Christmas marketing campaign to encourage their viewers to relax and take a break from the busy holiday season. In the advert, various people can be seen taking a moment to be alone and away from frantic holiday situations like parties and family gatherings.
IKEA’s main focus in this Christmas campaign is to project a sense of relatability. Christmas is typically a stressful time for people, and IKEA offers customers the option to relax and distance themselves from those stresses — preferably through the medium of IKEA products.
Creating a relatable Christmas marketing campaign is actually easier than doing one at any other time of the year. Christmas is a fairly universal experience, so it’s easy to include classic tropes in your marketing material since there are so many that your viewers will understand and relate to.
If, on the other hand, you want to project relatability at any other time of the year, you’ll need to complete significant market research on your audience. You need to know who you’re selling to, and when is the best time to target them, in order to create advertising that actively relates to them.
4. Amazon – Joy Ride
Amazon is a keystone of modern ecommerce, with billions of people visiting their website in 2023. Even so, they need to have a solid Christmas marketing campaign: advertising over Christmas is essential in keeping customers interested in their brand and ensuring a successful Christmas peak season.
Amazon’s 2023 Christmas campaign “Joy Ride” did not focus on its status as an online shopping giant or the convenience it provides customers. Instead, it tells a short, sentimental story about recapturing lost youth over the Christmas season.
In this campaign, Amazon delivers a masterclass in a common Christmas marketing campaign strategy: use sentimentality to establish an emotional connection between viewers and your brand. For giants like Amazon, this tactic is particularly valuable since the sheer size of the company makes appearing relatable difficult. Instead of trying to personally engage with customers, Amazon can instead use these emotionally charged campaigns to give their multinational corporation a more human face.
5. M&S - Thismas Not Thatmas
Marks & Spencers employ a combination of several of the tactics we’ve listed above in their 2023 Christmas campaign “Thismas Not Thatmas”. The general idea of the campaign is to break away from the social conventions of Christmas, advising people to “do what they love” instead of what they feel they have to do.
The advert combines relatability (as they address the stresses of Christmas much like IKEA’s ad) with celebrity endorsement (taking on Asda’s version by employing multiple stars in a single montage) in a maverick approach that challenges the typical sentimental view of Christmas. It’s an interesting take from a very old-school British retail, and reminds marketers that with the right tactics, you don’t need to adhere to traditional Christmas imagery.
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