7 Innovative Social Media Christmas Campaigns

Saying 2020 was a turbulent year is certainly an understatement but companies are trying their best to end the year on a high with positive, emotional, and innovative social media Christmas Campaigns. As a team of social media marketers, we enjoy rating a Christmas campaign, as well as coming up with ideas for them. Nothing beats the rush of seeing your campaign planned during those Summer months, finally coming to fruition. At OST, we’re committed to pushing boundaries every day, so we loved seeing the innovation in the social media campaigns below.

But let’s first start with one of our favourite social media Christmas campaigns we have done over the years at OST.

Supermalt – #SupermaltChristmas

Supermalt’s award-winning Christmas jumper blew up in 2017 with Afro Caribbean celebrities like Stormzy and Antony Joshua proudly sporting them on their socials getting a possible 9 million eyes on the campaign. The FOMO created by this lead to a competition to win your own Supermalt Christmas Jumper. The malt drink of course needed to accompany the stunning jumper as shown by @UKafrolista2 in the image above.

The campaign earned a lot of attention with mentions in Clash Music, Metro, and NME to name a few. Stormzys moments post also featured on Twitter. The key to this campaign was the fun, spirit, and vibrancy of the Supermalt brand, which made it fun to work on and for consumers to interact with. You can read more about the campaign in this case study.

Amazon – The Show Must Go On 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQdLD6kk960

This year Amazon has created an emotional Christmas TV advert. The basis for this campaign was from what actually happened to the main actress, no ‘based on a true story’, here.

The dancer had worked so hard for her starring role in the ballet but had lost out on performing due to Covid. The local community came together (socially distanced of course) with their torches bought from Amazon to enable her to give the performance that she had worked so hard for.

Whilst this campaign started on TV, it was also distributed across all the main social channels, where the reaction was generally extremely positive.

Sainsbury’s – Gravy Song

Another innovative Christmas campaign from this year is Sainsbury’s ‘Gravy Song’ advert. This emotional advert focuses on family. Everyone has their own family traditions at Christmas. For the poor girl in this advert, her dad is so proud of his gravy that it has his own song to go along with it. 

The use of home videos and images of Christmas dinner and party hats are something most people have in their own Christmas videos and can resonate with. The homely and personal nature of this ad makes it stand out from the rest. Despite the controversy around the casting (which has only amplified the campaign’s overall impact thanks to the power of social media), it is an effective Christmas campaign.

Lego/ Disney+ – Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

There are many Disney+ exclusives and a lot of Disney content primed for a #Christmasbinge but this crossover brings the joy of the Lego Movie and the classic Star Wars Holiday Special together. The use of graphics with a Star Wars-style quote and a lego figure using the Lego movie-style humour leads to a fun and childish advertisement. With content being posted on both Lego and Disney’s Twitter both audiences may find a lego toy for Christmas or watching Christmas movies on Disney+.

This is a partnership that makes a whole load of sense, and tapping into meme culture really enhances the creativity for this ad.

Hellmanns/ Animal Crossing – #HellmannsIsland

In comparison to the above, which is quite an expected collaboration,  Hellmann’s (the creators of mayonnaise) has unexpectedly teamed up with the Nintendo game Animal Crossing for their Christmas campaign. With a mix of ugly jumpers, spoiled turnips, and Island fun, Hellmanns have made a fun way of promoting a serious message about food waste. The campaign works with Animal Crossing’s seasonal changes adding new content to the game which players normally pick up the game for. By donating a spoiled turnip in-game, players will have a real-life impact with a donation by Hellmanns to FareShare food bank.

The outcome of this is a lot of user-generated content. Their Twitter is full of retweets of videos and pictures of island visitors. This campaign could have gone very wrong with the design of the island, connection issues, and the amount of work that needed to go into a project like this but so far Hellmann’s seemed to have pulled it off. It’s really good to see a gaming collaboration go so well and hopefully we see more next year. 

Spotify – #SpotifyWrapped

Spotify Wrapped is quickly becoming an annual tradition. With this wrapped up gift from Spotify you get a personalised present you’ll love. It also gets you listening to old favourites as well as Christmas music in December which is always good. 

Making the audience your ambassadors with user-generated content and creating a FOMO for people without Spotify, is done so easily with the sharing to social media. 

Apple TV – #MariahsMagicalChristmas

Christmas shows are a big part of the festive season with movies, talk shows, or a good old comedy. Of course, there is also music and Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas songs. This year she has her own show on Apple TV. Mariah seems to be running the social media for this on her own Twitter (including in her bio) in the ultimate show of influencer marketing. It’s making us want to buy Apple TV just to see it.

Salesforce – #SalesforceGratitude

Now for another one of our own. After the year we all have had we wanted to end on a high, so as with most others above, we focused on being positive with our clients’ Christmas campaigns. 

For Salesforce we challenged influencers, staff, and the community to tell us what they are grateful for this year. We received such a range of responses to the warm feelings towards the NHS and family/friends to the eccentric love of their garden. It’s always interesting to get influencers involved but we were overwhelmed with the number of responses we got and filled all the 23 days in no time. Managing an influencer heavy brand is something we love to do. We make sure to communicate with them and make the brand something influencers would want to interact with.

Thanks for reading. Overall this Christmas, innovation has been key to standing out. Linking with customers, influencers and celebrities is the common trend, bringing us all together after 2020. We hope that after reading these 7 innovative social media Christmas campaigns, the creative juices have sparked! We hope you can focus on the positive this festive season and from everyone at OST we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

If you will need any help with your social media advertising, influencer marketing, or other aspects of your social media strategy for 2021, feel free to contact us.