Along with feasts, friends, and family, the holidays also bring a wave of brands trying to get you to choose them for your holiday gift giving and New Year’s resolutions.
The best holiday campaigns elicit feelings of warmth, connection, and hope for a better year ahead, which is more important than ever at the end of a somewhat challenging 2020...
At Tongal, we believe the strongest brands bring out those emotions by telling stories that highlight the strength of their communities. Even though most of us can’t connect in person this holiday season, we can take solace in the shared bond of humanity that our online communities provide.
We’re breaking down some of our favorite recent campaigns that put the spotlight on our fellow humans and provide a model for doing the same with your brand.
Spotify Wrapped
Nothing highlights the uniqueness of our lived experiences in quite the same way as music. What we listen to speaks volumes about who we are, what we value, and how we connect with others. That’s why Spotify’s end-of-year Wrapped campaign has been a massive success for the brand.
In 2019 Spotify reported that more than 60 million people engaged with the feature, with over 3 billion streamed songs resulting from the automatically created playlists of top listens from the past year. Every aspect of Wrapped is intended for emotion and social sharing. The experience looks like an Instagram story and can be instantly shared from the app, which millions have elected to do across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
This year, Spotify opted to focus on two words: Gratitude and Resilience.
The words pay homage to the artists and podcasters that brought passion, excitement, and entertainment to our ears and homes since the pandemic started in March. To amplify the message, the brand launched extensive out-of-home efforts in major cities globally, featuring top streaming artists like Bad Bunny and podcasters such as Michelle Obama and Joe Rogan.
Peloton Meet our Members
This time last year, Peloton was all over the news for its less-than-communal spot featuring a terrified young woman attempting to appease her husband through exercise. “Sexist and Dystopian” are probably not what the company was going for, but it’s what they got.
This year, they seem to have learned from their mistake and instead leaned into the most powerful aspect of Peloton: The Community.
The campaign features a diverse cast of real Peloton riders showcasing how they fit workouts into their busy lives. From veterans competing against old buddies, to teachers getting together after tiring days of educating via Zoom, the campaign shows the powerful role that exercise has in our lives and how that can be amplified through shared goals and social connections.
REI #OptOutside
When REI made the move to shut down their retail locations and stop accepting online payments on Black Friday six years ago, it generated massive amounts of attention and respect. For a brand built on getting people into the great outdoors, it was a powerful statement that communicated their values in a clear way.
On top of closing all sales channels (something that was much easier to do this year), the brand also launched a social campaign with the tag #OptOutside to encourage people to share their experiences with mother nature.
Last year, under a new CEO, the brand decided to take things even further with concrete plans to become a zero-waste company and challenging other outdoor companies to do the same. In addition to user-generated content, REI produced footage and pictures of employees and partners opting to act on behalf of the environment, a 52-week action plan sourced from the community, and a unique landing page for engaging community members.
Lowe’s Letter to Home
Beloved by your dad for decades, Lowe’s is now seeking to broaden its audience and find mainstream appeal amongst DIYers and home-improvers. The timing is right, with home improvement companies seeing massive growth during the pandemic as lots of people use their extra time at home to spruce up the place.
Lowe’s has built on this momentum with its recent “Letters to Home” campaign that highlights some of the internet’s most wholesome people working with the brand on a variety of projects. The campaign includes a home-flipping dad, a pediatric nurse with three toddlers, and lots more stories that tug at the heart. Each story includes a letter of gratitude written to their abodes for all the memories, connections and good times had under their respective roofs.
“There’s so much to consider about how important home has become to us, more so than ever before this year,” -Marisa Thalberg, CMO of Lowe’s
What can you learn from these examples? Some common threads are a focus on storytelling over selling and real examples from everyday customers. Each campaign also plays to the unique strengths of the company. Spotify has invested a lot into its data machine, which enables the granular personalization of the Wrapped campaign. I didn’t necessarily want to know that I listened to over 2,000 minutes of Kanye West this year, but now I do. Peloton has a huge community of everyday athletes that already love to support each other and that enabled their Meet our Members campaign to come off as authentic instead of manufactured.
Take stock of your community and see what stories are already there for you to work with. A mix of data and intuition can lead to inspired content that adds value to existing community members, while beckoning new ones to join. And if you find yourself overwhelmed trying to produce all of that amazing content… well there’s an app for that.
