One of the highlights of the festive season is the emergence of creative ad campaigns on streets and TV screens, adding a touch of Christmas magic. Each year brings new ads aiming to inspire, amuse, or tug at our heartstrings. Successful brands in the past year shifted towards storytelling, evoking nostalgia or a good laugh. Despite the evolving Christmas landscape, quality digital PR services remain essential. Before diving into Christmas 2024 preparations, explore last year’s Christmas PR stunts and memorable campaigns for inspiration.
How to Prepare Your Christmas PR
This festive season is an awesome chance to perform the human side of your brand, so why not make the most of it by using emotions to increase engagement? Create and publish unique, topical content that will resonate with your target audience, appealing to their human nature and feelings. Here are some digital Christmas PR tips to help you cope with this challenge easily this festive season.
Making the Most of Existing Content
Be sure to prepare your content in advance that can be easily updated focusing on this year’s tendencies, whether it would be data, visuals, or product PR. A few changes can make a big difference in gaining additional coverage from what you got the previous year from the campaigns.
Even if your content isn’t solely focused on Christmas, you can add a small paragraph or section to use as a reason that could then be removed after the holiday. Create a list of key target platforms and publications you want your content to feature on.
Christmas SEO
While channels like PPC ads, social media, and email marketing are crucial, many companies often underestimate the potential of organic traffic. Seasonal keywords can significantly boost profit during the holidays, driving demand, leads, and search volume. Incorporating fundamental SEO best practices is essential for a robust organic SEO strategy this Christmas.
Alongside keyword research, there are a few other SEO considerations to maximize your online visibility during holidays:
- Create content that links to Christmas posts, articles, products, etc.
- Create Christmas-specific landing pages: e.g. landing pages for Christmas gift ideas or guides on where to celebrate it in the present circumstances.
Every PR manager should think over the advantages of optimizing their SEO strategy to get the most out of Christmas. Visibility is crucial all year round but becomes even more so during this festive time of year when competition is huge.
Social Media Christmas PR Stunts
Social media should be used to your advantage throughout the peak season as well. These platforms provide PR experts and brands with an opportunity to engage with clients one-on-one and show their personalities too.
- Customize your social media accounts: Make each social media profile shout Christmas!
- Share your Christmas events online: It can be a sale, fundraising, charity dinner, etc. You could even create a unique hashtag and ask people to use it when tagging or sharing content around your company.
- Engage with the Christmas conversation: Christmas is a good chance to get new followers and engage existing ones.
Email Marketing
We know the holidays are the best time to communicate with clients and followers. Whether it’s a special offer, a new product line, or a simple Christmas message, it’s important that your efforts have a personal touch. Email marketing still stands as the most personal online space to reach individuals, delivering your message directly to their inbox. Consider these tips for your Christmas email marketing campaigns:
- Put automation and personalization to good use.
- Animations are also effective in email campaigns and are a great way of showing personality and the brand’s care.
- Don’t forget about the Christmas emojis.
- Help your customers out. Holidays can be as exciting, as very stressful. Think about helpful reminders, such as the last dates for shipping in time for Christmas.
- Segment your email list: Segment your data to provide value to all of your subscribers by dividing your audience by email activity, engagement levels, and buying behavior.
- Use design mobile-friendly campaigns: More than half of emails are now opened via a mobile device and shopping on mobile has increased significantly in recent years too.
Timing is Everything
There is no need to remind: journalists enjoy holidays and vacations too. Get your ideas in early, as journalists often start looking for relevant festive content in November or even earlier. If you have a pitch or other content, aim to send emails until December, following up a week or so after. While some journalists work during the holidays, expect more out-of-office replies around mid-December. If you lack a pitch, consider using the PRNews service—an invaluable resource with a substantial list of media contacts to promote your brand, products, services, and Christmas offers effectively.
Christmas: It’s not for everyone!
While Christmas can be an easy focus for many brands, not all can use such an opportunity. It might be a refreshing change for “usual” quality content to get into a journalist’s inbox during a period of non-stop Christmas email snowballing at them.
Make sure you stand out with short, catchy email topics. This could be a shocking stat, question, or interesting piece of news.
A Couple of Great examples of Christmas PR Stunts
- Hinge: See What We’re Thankful For
Dating app Hinge created an email asking the question “This holiday season, what are you thankful for? ” to its members, using the opportunity to find out the opinion about its recent rebranding and subsequent growth.
The timing for this sort of communication was chosen perfectly. That email called up the desire to spend Christmas with “someone special.” and maybe the desire to find such a person in their app.
- The Season for Giving
The Blood Donor Centre has also used this holiday to call the attention of its worthy cause. They created a line outside their blood center with a number of ‘Santa Clauses’ dressed in the figure’s traditional red and white suits. A number of ‘Santa Clauses’ in white suits, leaving the building, showed they’ve just donated blood. This idea not only drew the attention of the passing legions of Christmas shoppers but also reached lots of people on social media like Twitter and Facebook.
- Myer
Myer created their Bigger than Christmas campaign to return joy back into the year. Their Christmas campaign inspired families to come together and celebrate all the missed moments, like birthdays, Thanksgiving, and weddings that were canceled or celebrated in isolation.
This campaign is something we can all be part of. With many missed celebrations in 2020, this encourages us to make the most of Christmas and celebrate with beloved ones. The ad doesn’t focus on promoting the purchases at Myer, but instead uses a catchy song encouraging us to celebrate it big.
- Australia Post
Australian Post’s 2020 Christmas video “Spread the Merry” described a story of a young girl who helped a lonely cockatoo in need. And an Australian Post delivery helped her. This campaign showed us how people and their good traits of character can help bring people (and animals) together during the holiday season.
In the video, the young girl Audrey and her local postie Kevin are on first-name terms, highlighting the personal service that Australian Post provides.
- Resy: Where to Spend New Year’s Eve
Don’t want to prepare the dinner for New Year’s Eve? I don’t want to, either—and most people don’t want to do it because washing dishes is an inevitable task after.
That’s what Resy appeal to in a recent Christmas email campaign. In a short but effective email, the company offers its subscribers the best places to celebrate the holiday. Like OpenTable, Resy allowed everybody to make effortless reservations to have a memorable dinner together with beloved ones.
This simple idea keeps the focus on what people can do to celebrate New Year’s Eve. And what is the better way to do that than through the beautiful place and delicious dinner that you don’t have to cook yourselves?
- Spotify ‘Wrapped 2020’ | Christmas PR Stunts
Spotify launched a Christmas campaign with their ‘Wrapped 2020’ project. The campaign gave Spotify users and creators a unique opportunity to celebrate and think over their year through a lens of audio and culture on the platform.
The campaign helped millions of people turn back on the year through the music and podcasts that helped them to stay optimistic and entertained.
- Black Owned Everything: Jingles and Things
Black Owned Everything ™ created a great guide for gifts in Jingles and Things.
In partnership with Netflix and the musical “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey,” Jingles and Things have chosen the gifts for Christmas and New Year congratulations, covering things ranging from fragrance to dishware to dolls. There’s truly something for all people there when everybody can support businesses while completing our holiday shopping.
- Amazon: The Show Must Go On | Christmas PR Stunts
Now we all know how sad and frustrating is when our plans have to be postponed or canceled. Amazon reminds us of this with the story of a small ballerina who was chosen to play the main role in the school’s dancing show. The girl was so happy to participate in it, but as the months passed and the pandemic became worst, the event was canceled. Ballet classes were moved online and the show was canceled.
Her little sister solved the situation by putting together a DIY event next to their apartment building. The event was socially distant, and the girl started to dance her part.
What is great, that rather than showing everyone ordering all supplies from Amazon, the video showcases the purchase of just one thing: a flashlight, that allowed people to see the dancer from their balconies.
Bottom Line: Christmas PR Stunts
Did you start preparing your PR campaigns for this Christmas? Have the Christmas PR plans already squeezed you up? No worries, our PRNews services are here to help you. Feel free to contact us or leave a comment with your favorite Christmas campaigns.
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