The Christmas Superbowl Of 2015
It’s that time of year again. The big C is in full swing. So what does the advertising landscape look like during the 2015 festive season?
To put simply, Christmas has turned into a superbowl-esk promotional period for the world’s largest brands. Budgets are absurd and creative is extremely competitive.
Let’s look at what brands are doing to capture your attention.
- THE STORY TELLER
Brands have shifted away from aggressive retail ads, and have moved toward creating an emotional connection with you through emotive story telling.
They capture your attention with a compelling character. They make you feel the emotions the character feels… And BAM, you now see the brand in a positive light. Christmas shopping done.
In theory this is what is meant to happen, but are you actually more inclined to purchase from retailer ‘x’ because of the touching story they told you of an old man at Christmas time?
I believe you are.
What they are doing is creating a positive emotional response that is cognitively linked in your brain to the brand. That cognitive link is what causes you to choose brand ‘x’ over brand ‘y’ at shelf. So from what we have seen so far, Christmas has shifted from a direct response BUY, BUY, BUY period, into a branding period for the major retailers. Interestingly, this approach ignites the impact of the Christmas period creative bonanza to live on much longer than the single promotional period.
- KEEP WATCHING
The big black box commercials are no longer king. Brands have seen the content consumption shift toward digital and followed suit. In doing so, brands have realised if you can capture their attention using a compelling story (yup, that’s point one…tick), then they will be willing to watch more than a 15/30 second ad. Heck, you may even search, or share an ad with your friends these days. Something you never would have done 10 years ago. John Lewis is a perfect example of this.
However, could long form content be getting carried away? Some brands have created content that spans longer that 3 minutes in length. If every brand starts to create long form Christmas ads (….they are), it will become a sea of emotional videos that flood viewers causing the impact to be downed out.
For the moment, let the sea of emotions flow:
Enjoy the festive season everyone! See you in 2016.