And just like that, the official onrush of holiday ads is here. From now until next year, hundreds of festive ads will play across our screens. They’ll include familiar storylines, such as family reunions and Santa Claus spoofs, and familiar tunes, such as Jingle Bells and Baby, It’s Cold Outside. Occasionally, you’ll come across an ad that genuinely sparks your interest and delights you with its originality. HP’s new holiday ad, Reinvent Giving, falls into this category. As the story unfolds, a woman enlists the help of strangers to bring unexpected joy and magic to a little girl’s day. You can watch the magic unfold here:
BBDO San Francisco created this refreshingly original ad directed by Sara Dunlop (Dreamlands). BBDO and HP are among the brands and agencies that have taken the Free to Bid "pledge" to include a female director on every triple-bid project to help level the playing field for female directors.
Why It Works
Reinvent Giving holds our attention from beginning to end, more as a narrative short than a traditional ad. The story stays one step ahead of its audience. Timing is especially important here – as soon as the marionettes descend over her balcony, the audience experiences the same joy as the little girl at the same moment.
Music also plays a key role. The score is delicate and cuts out at certain moments to create tension and build anticipation. The score encompasses elements of holiday music, without triggering a knee-jerk humbug reaction (and perhaps to stay relevant past the holiday season). As a whole, the ad manages to capture the aura and spirit of the holiday without smothering us in it.
As far as the marketing message goes, invention and imagination tie into the brand’s core values, and what better way to communicate that than through a highly imaginative spot?
Last but not least: casting! Casting actors who wholly embody the characters helps drive the narrative home in the viewer’s mind and makes the story that much more indelible. There’s no time to get to know the characters, so the actors really need to look and feel the part. The puppet maker looks eccentric, yet warm, and the girl who orchestrates the surprise from her HP seems to embody curiosity, whimsy, and imagination.
What You Can Learn
Some of the year’s best creative comes out during the holiday season. Storytelling takes center stage and brands focus mainly on making emotional connections. When developing a holiday ad, it’s easy to pull from the same old source materials: Santa Claus, family gatherings, chestnuts roasting on an open fire… But it’s much harder to come up with something completely original. A holiday ad should strive to be memorable, and the best way to do that is to think outside the box. The uniqueness of the story is what makes Reinvent Giving so memorable, and as any advertiser knows, the real holiday miracle is to create an ad that stands out from all the rest.
You usually won’t have a full 2 minutes to tell your story, so you’ll also have to be creative with the time that you do have. According to Ad Age, there is a :30 second version of HP’s spot that will air on TV. It will be interesting to see how the creators preserve the story arc and the emotional build up in a much shorter version. Cut-downs are an artform unto themselves, and you can learn more about how to do a proper cut-down here.
Finding your message is also key. How can a brand differentiate its message from all the other holiday-tinged ones out there? Instead of making it just about giving and the spirit of giving, HP made their ad about reinventing giving - finding non-traditional ways to give back to others and to bring magic into other people’s lives. HP says that it finds success when advertising to millennials when it taps into their desire for something other than "predictability and sameness." So tap into the creative negative space of everything that’s already been done before and see what you can conjure up.
For these reasons, Reinvent Giving is one of the best ads we’ve seen so far this holiday season.
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What did you think of this spot? Which ad should we tackle next? Tell us all about it in the comments below.
