For citizens across the globe, the holiday season provides an opportunity to spend time with families, to give back, and to show appreciation for one another.
For brands, it’s an opportunity. With millions of shoppers out and about, there’s a chance to show off new products, forge bonds with consumers, and display creativity for everyone to see. Those brands that do the holiday activation right will not only boost consumers’ spirits, but also the company’s bottom line.
Check out these three ways that brands can delight consumers during the busiest time of the year!
Show Them a Good Time
Yes, the holidays are filled with all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings, but it’s also an extremely stressful time. For many, the time and financial investment associated with the season make life a bit more difficult. Therein lies the opportunity for brands to bring a little cheer.
Take Baileys, for example. The Diageo-owned Irish liqueur is hosting “The Baileys Treat Stop” in the West End of London’s Covent Garden. Home to high-end fashion stores, the Apple Market, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is bustling during the holiday season. Seeing that as an opportunity, Baileys has opened up a temporary bar serving Baileys Original Irish Cream, Baileys Pumpkin Spice, and Baileys Chocolate Luxe hot drinks.
Guests who stop by are not only able to customize their drinks with sprinkles, sugary treats, and glitter, but also can attend workshops on making creative cocktails. For those looking for a festive retreat from shopping, Baileys has provided just the place.
Show Some Personality
With so many people out and about during this time of year, there’s an incredible opportunity to get consumers’ attention. Banks’s beer, the Wolverhampton-based British beer, saw that opportunity and used it to show the world its sense of humor.
The Banks’s Advent Calendar, displayed on the side of an industrial building, is a bit cheekier than your average Advent calendar. Rather than a normal calendar, the boarded-up windows reveal Christmas-themed graffiti like a sad snowman with an unfortunate yellow stain, as well as off-color advice like “Start Practicing Your ‘Just What I Wanted’ Face.”
This sort of stunt highlights the fact that, while Christmas is a celebratory time, people often become frustrated with the commercial part of the season and repetitive behavior that stems
from it. Those who agree are certain to look more fondly upon the British ale.
Show Them Something They’ve Never Seen Before
Holiday gift guides are a pretty standard practice among fashion brands, but no one has done it quite like the Canadian fashion brand, Roots. Staged at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Roots invited about 600 influencers and members of the press to their “Northern Light” event.
The event featured a mixture of live and digital models working the runway in front of a backdrop of three massive screens, each of which displayed dynamic Canadian landscapes.
That’s not all, though. A live DJ spun music for the event and there was even a custom app that allowed customers to purchase catalog items as they appeared on stage. The app used a Shazam-like technology to detect soundwaves from the music and display the appropriate catalog items, giving consumers a “see now, buy now” experience on their phones.
The event was a smash hit, garnering 170K live viewers worldwide and over 11.5 MM impressions, all while giving consumers an experience like none they’d had before.
