Top 11 Brilliant Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns

It’s that time of the year once again- planning for holidays. It’s time for customers to step out for holiday shopping and also the time for loads of holiday marketing campaigns. It is also when one can find brand campaigns across any channel brands can lay their hands on, social media, print media, televisions, emails, SMS, WhatsApp messages, and push notifications.

This time of the year is also the season for some of the best ideas for holiday marketing campaigns. While eagerly awaiting the successful holiday marketing campaigns 2022, but here are some of the top 11 examples of excellent holiday marketing campaigns brands that you can still use to optimize holiday marketing campaigns:

1. Coca Cola: This Christmas, Give Something Only You Can Give

This is not the first that Coca-Cola has come out with their brand’s holiday marketing campaigns that have struck a chord with their customers. Through this holiday season marketing campaign, Coca-Cola conveys that the best present you can give to your loved ones is through your presence, not through expensive gifts.

This commercial is the story of a father and a daughter and how the father goes through odds to deliver his daughter’s Christmas request letter to Santa. Sailing and swimming across the sea, trekking through the forest, fighting all the elements of nature, and finally climbing steep snow-covered hills, the father reaches Santa’s home to find the door closed for Christmas.

Just when one feels lost, Santa arrives in a Coca-Cola truck to fulfill the girl’s Christmas wish-to have her father back home for Christmas.

2. Orange: Keep Christmas Wonderful

One of the best holiday marketing campaigns, this Orange commercial touches upon that Christmas and its preparations are usually far from perfect; however, it can all end well with just the right amount of attention and with Orange’s extraordinary gifts.

With the “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” song playing in the background, the video shows all the challenges that people face during the preparation for Christmas, from getting stuck on snow-clad roads to running away from falling Christmas tree wrongly cut, to people stuck in airports due to storms, to many more similar challenges.

However, the message towards the end is clear-keep and straightforward Christmas wonderful with Orange gifts.

3. Oreo: Oreo For Santa

Oreo has constantly been talking about how it needs to be eaten in almost all its advertisements. In this 2019 creative holiday marketing campaign, a sales clerk teaches an elf how to eat an Oreo cookie the right way.

Simple yet celebratory, this commercial is full of festival spirits while maintaining brand communication.

4. Starbucks: Red Cup

It was the year 1997 when Starbucks first launched its special holiday cup. In 2014, Starbucks took their festival cup one more step forward and introduced the holiday #redcupcontest for their customers on Instagram. With branding and customer engagement as the fundamental goal of company holiday marketing campaigns, this #redcupcontest has definitely delivered for the brand.

So popular has this campaign been for Starbucks that they even have a countdown timer on their website for the festival red cup launch for this season. With a share every 14 seconds on Instagram in 2015 within the first 2 days itself, this has definitely become one of the successful holiday marketing campaigns for this global coffee giant.

5. Ikea: Don’t Let Your Celebrations Go To Waste

From how holiday marketing campaigns started to where they are today, commercials have come a long way. One such example is the Ikea advertisement. Focused more on responsible celebrations this festival season, the ad begins with a boy running back home, trying to escape from giant fruits, vegetables, and fruits falling from the sky.

Not knowing what is happening, the buy runs home really scared; however, the moment he reaches home, he finds that the food falling from is actually nature throwing back whatever his mother was throwing into the dustbin.

This creative holiday marketing campaign beautifully captures the essence of celebrating responsibly and not throwing food unnecessarily instead of storing them in Ikea containers.

6. Toyota: Let’s Bring Everyone Closer This Holiday

Very few commercials hold the power to bring the community together and convey a strong social message like this commercial from Toyota.

A commercial that follows a family in the US travels through heavy snowfall and gets travelers in a busy airport to get together to welcome army soldiers who have traveled back to join their families during the holiday season.

7. Woodies: We Are All Homemakers

A tribute to society and mankind, this Irish home improvement store commercial touches the spirit of giving like no other. The commercial speaks of the story of Mrs. Higgins, an elderly lady who is loved by her neighborhood.

Throughout the commercial, Mrs. Higgins is seen meeting and being greeted by various people in her neighborhood every time they cross her house. Mrs. Higgins faces one challenge, though, the fence door that leads to her yard is missing a hinge, and she constantly faces a challenge opening and closing the same.

Taking notice of this, a teenager from the neighborhood replaces the hinge for her on this fine snowy day. Mrs. Higgins returns home to see a brand new shining hinge and is pleasantly surprised. Extraordinarily creative and sentimental commercial, this is truly a tribute to humanity and the festival of gifting.

8. Macy’s: In Dad’s Shoes

Taking the idea of giving a thoughtful gift, this beautiful and modern commercial revolves around a little girl stepping into her dad’s shoes while thinking about what gift to give to her father. The moment she puts her foot in it, everyone around sees her as her father, and she experiences an entire day doing what her father does.

The commercial ends with the girl realizing that her father does many things she did not even learn and that he spends a lot of time in the shoes; she ends up gifting him Macy’s socks. A beautiful rendition of the saying, “One really cannot understand until you have walked in their shoes.”

9. Walkers: Too Good To Share

They say the holiday season is all about “sharing and caring,” and one would believe so until the twist almost the end of the commercial featuring Mariah Carey.

Signifying that the chips are so good that this is the only thing in the whole wide world that no one can share or let go, Mariah had to sing a high note to ensure the elf who was fighting for the last packer walkers chips lets go of the packet.

In the end, though, she does share one chip in Christmas spirit; she does share one chip which is also grabbed by a pigeon.

10. Amazon: The Show Must Go On

There is no better example of effective holiday sales campaigns for online marketing than Amazon’s holiday campaign titled ‘the show must go on.’ The commercial talks about the inspiring story of how the community, the young ballerina’s sister, and her trainer get together to give her a stage to perform her dance despite her dream lead role dance event getting canceled due to COVID 19.

This commercial from Amazon is genuinely inspiring and offers an emotional finale.

11. Apple: Make Someone’s Holiday

It begins in a very familiar manner, with a family going to see relatives around the holidays.

The brilliance of the advertisement is that the iPad appears to be the only thing keeping the peace during their voyage. The ad then takes a bittersweet turn as the product is used to make a present for a loved one, just when you think that’s the objective.

Why it works: Apple’s ads are frequently feature-heavy, emphasizing utility above everything else. They emphasize emotional appeal in this commercial and utilize the product as a vehicle to tell the tale.