How can businesses stand out in all the festive promotions?
Christmas promotions are everywhere, ’tis the season of discounting and flash sales, but how do brands both little and large standout in all the festive noise? Consumers are said to spend in excess of £30 billion in the last quarter of the year, rivalry for their attention therefore, is increasing difficult to obtain and we know just how difficult competing for consumer trust can be.
After 14 years of crafting seasonal campaigns, our marketing and creative experts have prepared some top tips to help prevent your business from being snowed in under all the other holiday promotions.
Stories Sell…
A combination of creativity, storytelling, and emotion are core features of any successful marketing campaign, the festive holiday season sees no exception to this rule; the Christmas period is frequently harnessed to establish feelings of warmth towards brands. By replicating the warm and fuzzy feeling most of us desire at Christmas, advertisers/brands take advantage of the opportunity to feature and associate their brand with such positive experiences, not necessarily driving sales exclusively for the seasonal period but also to impact the long term sentiment consumers have towards their brand.
TIP 1
Create an emotional response
Products don’t always sell but experiences often do. John Lewis, a brand who’s seasonal ads are almost synonymous with Christmas now, delivered yet another special ad with the “Bear and The Hare”; the bear had never seen Christmas before because of hibernation, his friend the Hare is determined to change this, the bear’s face when he catches a glimpse of the decorated Christmas tree for the first time truly reminds you of the joy of the festive period, and successful delivers an experience that associates this sentiment with John Lewis.
TIP 2
Construct a memorable Christmas experience
For over 20 years Starbucks have designed a new festive cup, (remember that year they did a plain red design, and everyone complained?), celebrating the festive period through the seasonal design of cups, it spreads awareness of the festive spirit and associates’ brand with that warm-fuzzy feeling.
TIP 3
Reiterate brand values
The festive season isn’t always about sales, it’s a critical time of year to raise awareness of brand values and take advantage of the general feeling of goodwill. Dulux executes this well, Dulux aims to transform people’s surroundings their moods, their views and attitude to life. Dulux hopes to inspire consumers to decorate by celebrating the power of colour and the ongoing positive change that comes from creating a beautiful living space i.e. “let’s colour”, in this ad creative Dulux has cleverly incorporated these values in addition to demonstrating superior paint performance.
What does every successful marketing campaign have in common with each other regardless of target audience, proposition and industry? Good design.
Why Design is Critical
When people hear a message, they are most likely able to remember 10% of the information relayed three days later, but when the same message is coupled with a visual graphic, people can remember 65% of the information 3 days later. (Brain Rules, 2018). Good design is ultimately the difference between a successful business and one that struggles to break through the noise, when you’re planning any marketing campaign or producing collateral, design should be considered a core element that has just as much importance as the proposition itself and here are some pretty compelling stats that demonstrate just that…
The brain likes images far more than it likes text. In fact, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster (3M).
What do 93% of highly engaging Facebook posts have in common? They are all photo posts (Social Media Examiner).
After reviewing more than 1 million articles, BuzzSumo found that adding a visual every 100 words or so makes your content twice as likely to be shared.
93% of all human communication is almost non-verbal, which means that our brains prefer to perceive visual cues (DMP).
Having a video on your landing page pays off. In one study, it boosted conversion rates by 86% (CrowdRiff).
Video leaves a lasting impression. 80% of people say that they remember watching a specific video ad in the last month (Cisco).
Color boosts attention span and recall by up to 82%. With color, a person is 80% more likely to read a piece of content (Xerox).
92.6% of consumers say that color dimension is the key factor affecting their purchase decision. (Kissmetrics)
In a survey of 2,684 people, 46.1 percent said the most important determinant of website credibility was the design look, according to the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.
The Design Council also determined was that “every £100 a design alert business spends on design increases turnover by £225” (Canva).
76% of Marketers believe that attractive graphic design makes your business seem larger than it actually is (Turquoise Creative).
Design skills contribute £209bn to the UK economy, a new report from the Design Council shows (Design Week).
By 2021, global revenue from ‘offline’ commerce channels will decrease by almost 20%. (Small Biz Genius).
most frequently used visual asset
In terms of the most frequently used visual asset, stock photography leads at 40%. Original Graphics 37% come second, followed by Charts & Data Visualization 12%, Video & Presentations 7%, and Gifs & Meme 4%. (Venngage, 2018).
Storytelling, brand and design all work in harmony for the most effective seasonal marketing campaigns, these elements have limited effectiveness as component parts, we’d recommend that you begin Christmas campaign planning after Summer to ensure your business has the largest window of opportunity to craft credible campaigns that inspire good will with customers when the festive period begins.
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