There’s a lot in the way of cute animation happening this festive period, with noteworthy spots from Hermès, Dolce & Gabbana and Cartier, as well as that big budget number from John Lewis.
Check them each out below:
Bonus: This is not quite a Christmas spot, but there’s a fun animation worth a watch from Louis Vuitton too. It pays tribute to games like Tetris and Space Invaders to promote its new iPhone and iPad cases just in time for the holiday season…
This article first appeared on Fashionista
The holiday season can account for up to 40% of a retailer’s annual revenue, and thus it’s no surprise to see some of our favorite stores (and fashion brands) go all-out with festive campaigns in a bid to capture as many dollars as possible.
Multiple initiatives have lined up to grab our attention this year, but if there’s one thing tying them together, it’s interactivity. From singing contests you can enter to touchscreens you can explore, participation is the biggest push for 2013.
Pinterest is also proving big news. According to a recent study by Lab42, 94% of users say the virtual scrapbooking site has changed how they prepare for the holidays, while 42% have created their own holiday-themed boards. Meanwhile, stats show such activity is also affecting sales. Revenue on retail sites that originated from Pinterest doubled over Thanksgiving weekend, and brands like Target and Topshop have quickly taken advantage.
Here’s our pick of the top seven activations.
1. eBay’s Touchscreen Storefronts
First up is the digital storefronts eBay set up for Rebecca Minkoff, Toms and Sony in the Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall this season. Shopping from them is easy. As with any smartphone or tablet device, you just touch the screen and start browsing products, then complete the order via PayPal on your mobile device. Items can either be delivered to your home for free or picked up at the Sony Gallery on the floor below.
2. Gap’s VSCO-Powered Gift Guide
Gap gave an indie twist to its holiday gift guide by partnering with seven well-known users of photo-editing app VSCO for its Make Love campaign. Those artists acted as both models and photographers, captured in various Gap products themselves and completing their own photo assignments based on one of Gap’s holiday themes: fair isle, indigo, metallic, plaid, stripes, texture and warmth. The results are featured on both a dedicated page on VSCO’s website as well as in Gap.com’s “Give A-Z” holiday guide.
3. John Lewis’ “The Bear and The Hare”
Over in the UK meanwhile, John Lewis wins for the biggest budget when it comes to advertising this year. It spent £7 million ($11.4 million) on a hand-animated and very cute tale called “The Bear and The Hare,” which has garnered more than 10 million views on YouTube to date. What’s innovative is all the components that go with it, and none more so than the windows of its flagship store in London. They feature some of the 188 animal sculptures made from 7,000 everyday products tied to the bear and hare theme, like a reindeer made of Dyson vacuums, a polar bear of Nintendo Wiis and a turkey crafted from a series of rolled up towels. The retailer is also running a contest with the campaign, calling all aspiring singers to record and upload their own versions of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” for a chance to have their recording play with the commercial on Christmas day.
4. JC Penney’s “Jingle Mingle” Singing Contest
JC Penney also called for singing content from its fans this year. Up until Dec. 3 it invited aspiring vocalists to upload videos of themselves singing “Silent Night” to its Jingle Mingle website. Hundreds of the best are then going to be played on the facade of the retailer’s Manhattan Mall store. For each one submitted, JC Penney donated $20 to the United Service Organizations (USO).
5. Topshop’s “Dear Pinterest” Campaign
It was all about Pinterest for Topshop this season. The UK-based retailer used Pinterest to power its online gift guide, and even attached oversized tags to in-store merchandise identifying the ones that had been pinned the most. In November, there was also a giant touchscreen in Topshop’s New York and London flagships that allowed shoppers to pin, share and shop from a gift list there and then.
6. Target’s Pinteresting “Awesome Shop”
Pinterest also makes an appearance at Target this season. Target has launched an e-commerce storefront powered by Pinterest as well as its own reviews this year. Target Awesome Shop, as it’s called, incorporates over 1,000 products that have received four stars or higher in the customer reviews on Target.com and are one of the retailer’s most-pinned products on Pinterest. The result: a highly curated, not to mention awesome, list of recommended items. You can search by category and then click on each product for more information (such as those reviews), before being redirected to the main Target.com site to add them to your shopping cart.
7. Louis Vuitton’s “The Goose Game”
Louis Vuitton created an online board game to feature its holiday gifts. The game, which functions much like “Snakes and Ladders,” is made up of squares featuring Louis Vuitton products that players can purchase in just a few clicks.
Honorable Mention: Kmart’s “Show Your Joe”
It may not be a stunning piece of innovation, but Kmart’s “Show Your Joe” commercial sure brought the laughs — and the views. The video, which was made for TV, has racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube alone since its Nov. 15 release.
The big news over the past couple of weeks in the retail and fashion tech space was of course the concept of Amazon drones, but multiple other stories grabbed the headlines too. Here’s a highlight of the best ones…
Call me a softie, but Holiday Surprise from Kohl’s is one of my favourite campaigns this Christmas.
Based on the very festive theme of kindness, it’s a simple 30-second spot that sees a young couple rushing to decorate their elderly neighbour’s apartment before she returns to the building. It cleverly tugs on the heartstrings of all those viewing when it ends with a shot of the expression on her face once she does so.
Set to a cover version of Bob Dylan’s Forever Young, the lyrics set the tone: “May your wishes all come true. May you always do for others. And let others do for you.”
It’s a different move for the retailer, which, like many of its counterparts, usually focuses heavily on promotional messaging at this time of year. As AdAge reported, this emotional broadcast is in a bid to “stand out from the promotional maelstrom of the season”. While Kohl’s is still pushing its discounting alongside, this ‘brand’ spot layered in aims to be disruptive in a different way, said its chief customer officer, Michelle Gass. “We know what people remember are the moments of giving,” she said.
Though there are yet to be any postings, Kohl’s is also inviting consumers to share their stories of kindness over social media with the hashtag #ShowKindness.
Consumers are invited to flick personalised digital snowflakes onto the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in New York this Holiday season.
The initiative, developed in partnership with creative digital agency, The Science Project, and sponsored by MasterCard, is part of the retailer’s wider focus on the legendary Yeti rumoured to reside on its roof making snow during the festive period, this year.
The Yeti Snow Workshop as this particular window is called, invites passersby to visit saks.com/snow on their mobiles where they can find out their own Yeti name, add it to a snowflake design and then flick it from their device to instantly see it gently falling down the window.
In-store those who spend over $150 or more with their MasterCard, can then receive a 3D-printed snowflake created by the MakerBot. Harry Cunningham, senior VP-store planning and visual at Saks, also told AdAge: “3D printing has been a big of late, so some of the figures in our window this year are actually 3D printed. As technology advances and as things move forward, we’re looking for opportunities to inject that into our process.”
Six of the other store windows depict different scenes of the Yeti’s life, from being “an under-appreciated snowmaker in Siberia to his starring role as a true snowflake artist in New York”. Each also features the hashtag #SaksYeti.
They were unveiled last week with a 3D light show mapped onto the façade of the store created by Iris Worldwide (as in the YouTube video below). It runs every seven minutes each night from 5-11pm over the Holiday season.
Given it’s the day before Thanksgiving in the US – meaning retailers are about to go all out on heavy promotions – here’s a special round-up of all the ways they’re using social and digital to help lure the seasonal shopper and start converting those all-important Holiday sales…
Hopefully by now you will have all seen, or at least heard about, John Lewis’ epic £7 million Christmas ad: The Bear and The Hare, created by adam&eve DDB.
The hand-animated tale has received an enormous 8.7 million views on YouTube since launch on November 8, and according to reports, helped drive sales of £101.45 million in the British department store in the week that followed, up 10.7% on 2012.
Despite the fact the spot premiered on TV in the UK during The X-Factor (played as an entire two-minute ad break), this campaign lives well beyond its traditional format. Here’s a breakdown of some of the more interactive ways how:
UK home furnishings brand, Cath Kidston, is running a cute campaign on its website in the run up to Christmas that invites shoppers to hunt through its pages to try and find Santa.
Every time they spot him they could be in with the chance of winning the products found on that page.
Based on the idea that Santa’s gone into hiding due to having too many wish lists to read through from the retailer’s main Christmas competition, the initiative sends fans on a hunt around its day bags, zip wallets, baby sleep suits and Christmas stocking fillers.
It is of course a clever move to get shoppers searching through the whole site, not to mention popping back on a regular basis, at a time when present inspiration doesn’t go amiss.
US online jewellery retailer, Bauble Bar, is running something similar for the festive season too. Email subscribers are being sent clues to “Buried Baubles” each day – items with serious markdowns hidden somewhere on the site. Meanwhile, its “30-days of Sparkle” campaign – as below – also sees daily discounts and offers being unveiled in the run up to Christmas.
In the running for best Holiday campaign 2013? I’d say so:
Topshop’s campaign for the coming festive period sees Pinterest integrated both online and in its stores.
The British high street retailer has partnered with the virtual scrapbooking site in a bid to “showcase key product and facilitate the gifting process”, said its newly appointed global head of marketing and communications, Sheena Sauvaire.
“Dear Topshop”, as the initiative is called, sees a gift search embedded on its site allowing shoppers to explore by quirky categories such as “A gift that will wow”, “All things that sparkle” or “A bit of romance”. The results of each can all be pinned, shared and, of course, shopped.
Those pinned the most will be featured on the Topshop.com homepage daily.
Tying the campaign to the physical space, key products in store will also have a Pinterest call to action on their tags. Meanwhile, giant touch screens in the retailer’s flagship London and New York stores will likewise allow customers to pin, share and shop.
Staff in other stores will be wearing Pinterest t-shirts and carrying iPads in order to walk customers through the campaign.
Added Sauvaire: “Pinterest, being a strong visual platform, was the ideal platform as it allows our customers to collect products and inspirations to share with family and friends. Add the physical component, and we are creating true ‘social shopping’ during the festive period.”
Consumers are also invited to submit their own inspirational boards on Pinterest tied to the Holiday theme to be in with the chance of winning a variety of prizes including shopping sprees, front row seats to fashion week, and more.
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