Once a year, around the beginning of November, we see our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds become cluttered with posts about how Christmas is coming! It seems to be common knowledge that when we see the extremely well branded Coca Cola advert embrace our television screens, Christmas is only but a peek around the corner, and by peek I mean two months. It is not only the Coca Cola brand that seems to have established themselves with the much celebrated holiday, but Toys-R-Us and John Lewis have taken on board their own fair share.
Toys-R-Us may only take a back seat in the Christmas festivities, but everyone knows that when they hear that theme tune blaring out from their TV speakers, the Christmas clock is ticking away. John Lewis has managed to establish themselves this year as the Christmas advert phenomenon. Having spent £4 million on their advert this year, they decided to do it justice by premiering it in a full block of ad space during X-Factor. But where do all these Christmas television ad campaigns fit into social media?
Well it would seem that every year, we take a brief break from the world of technology and revert back to the good old-fashioned television. We all know how Christmas is the time of year where you can laze around, flicking through channels and will be very likely to find one of your favourite films being shown. However, it is how each ad campaign and television channel uses social media that makes us ready for the festivities to begin.
John Lewis’s 2013 Christmas advert has not only set out to capture the hearts of millions but they have set out to capture the hearts of Twitter users everywhere. As the advert features a pair of unlikely friends, the bear and hare, they have proceeded to create Twitter accounts for the two fictional characters and even Lily Allen has latched onto a slice of the action. As Lily recorded the vocals for the advert she retweets a lot of the content. This means that her millions of followers are also being bombarded with John Lewis’s Christmas content. But it’s fair to say John Lewis has done a good job of achieving high levels of talk about their Christmas campaign, with 80% of 90,000 Twitter mentions containing positive feedback on the advert.
Whatever package or parcel our social media Christmas comes in, it’s clear that there will always be a buzz. Constant countdowns, ‘crimbos coming’ hashtags and photos of festive themes; Christmas is the one time of the year that minimal effort is required by companies and social media users alike to encourage content sharing. It seems to happen all on its own if you market your Christmas dynamics accordingly.
