The power of Christmas Commercials

In the Netherlands they only appear on television when Sinterklaas has left the country, yet in England and Germany they can be seen from as early as October… of course, we are talking about Christmas commercials. While for consumers, Christmas still seems a long way off, for marketers now is the time to think about whether or not to develop a Christmas campaign. And if so, how do you manage to break through the clutter of that time of the year as well as hold the attention with your brand (message)?

Most Christmas ads that are aired on television are generally emotion-heavy, long, and cinematic, with brands trying to connect the positive Christmas feeling to their brand. But how successfully can a brand truly own that emotional territory and create the highly desired breakthrough, when the whole media landscape is also trying to tap into the year-end event? In the UK, the festive commercial landscape is an eagerly awaited event, with social media commentary about John Lewis starting as soon as Hallowe’en has ended, and online ambassadors discussing who will be the successor of Kevin the Carrot? The pressure to perform couldn’t be higher.

RESEARCH DESIGN

We have pre-tested nearly a hundred Christmas commercials from the Netherlands, Germany, and UK over the last four years, and we have developed and shared general Christmas advertising learnings. Unlike others, we don’t ignore the importance of advertising avoidance, which is why in our tests we do not only let consumers evaluate the commercials, we also put them in a commercial block where they indicate how long they will watch the ad for. This ‘unforced exposure’ methodology is a true display of reality, as consumers can also skip ad, just as they would when watching TV at home (for example by zapping or getting something to drink). We then ask respondents to tell us what they remember having seen with regards to the brands, as well as the message (or messages) of the commercials. By taking into account the way people deal with advertising avoidance in the pre-test research design, we are able to better predict the impact of commercials.

RESULTS

To be able to create our general Christmas commercial learnings, we first need to deep dive into our dataset. First of all, we calculated the averages on diverse elements of all Christmas commercials per country and placed this within the perspective of our benchmark. This allows us to understand to what extent advertisers at home and abroad have collectively been able to correctly align with the positive sentiment surrounding the Christmas period. Which gave us some interesting insights:

1. CHRISTMAS COMMERCIALS ARE RATED MORE POSITIVELY THAN
REGULAR COMMERCIALS IN THE NETHERLANDS AND UK

We found that Christmas commercials in the Netherlands and the UK are more highly evaluated for direct response (e.g. whether respondents like the commercial, and to what extent it evokes positive and relevant associations) and brand activation (e.g. sharing with others and buying intent), whereas this is not the case for Germany.

In Germany, Christmas commercials generally score lower on our evaluation statements than the average commercial, when compared to the benchmark. And it seems that the Dutch and English are much fonder of Christmas commercials; the commercials are much better at evoking positive, relevant and unique associations and they score highly on different aspects, such as excitement, distinctiveness and personal relevance.

As a consequence of this high evaluation, we see that consumers are then more activated by the commercials, as they indicate they would like to share it with others and intend to buy the advertised product or service. But this becomes more difficult to achieve when every brand has a Christmas ad on, at the same time. The challenge is therefore to draw the emotional domain more towards your brand, and away from the others.

2. VIEWERS HAVE SERIOUS DIFFICULTIES IN RECALLING THE BRAND

Our pretesting set-up enables us to determine how well commercials catch the attention of consumers and how willing they are to watch. Because most Christmas commercials are longer than regular, we also notice this impacts the scores for engagement, which are, for all three countries, substantially low. For the Netherlands, the average score for engagement is around or even a little lower than the benchmark, and for both the UK and Germany, the average scores for engagement are more around the bottom 20% of our benchmark scores!! This is even more critical when we recognize that respondents still see a fair proportion of the commercial, since they are so long.

And it appears to be difficult to also create a distinctive Christmas commercial in which the brand is integrated in a way that is easily recalled. Christmas commercials score lower on brand recall, as the brand is not always (or even, generally not) the centre of the commercial. Instead, the commercial is usually focused on a story, and only includes a brand cue at the very end. Creativity, it seems, is all too often, at the expense of good brand linkage.

3. A LOWER BRAND FIT AND UNDERSTANDING IMPEDES MAXIMISING
THE FULL POTENTIAL

Despite the fact that the Christmas commercials get more attention and people are more positive after seeing the ads, they lack brand fit and have lower message understanding. As a result of this relatively low brand fit and lack of clarity, we see consumers have reduced recall of the brands they saw a commercial from, and/or what message these brands wanted to convey. Given that previous research by DVJ Insights has shown that these specific aspects are important drivers of the effectiveness of commercials “in the market”, this exposes an important pain point for Christmas commercials. After all, what’s the point of a fun and striking commercial if the resulting positive feeling cannot be clearly linked to a brand and/or call-to-action for the brand?

The problem is that the brand linkage is weak, and the Christmas creativity puts pressure on the brand fit. People must easily understand the (brand) message, the visuals should be really close to the brand (and what it stands for), and consciously it needs to fit directly with the brand. Allowing consumers to be able to make an easy, logical ’shortcut‘ to the brand.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

It’s a balancing act to make a good Christmas commercial. The favourable impact of a Christmas commercial is substantially reduced if the message and brand are not clear. The results and recommendations can be summarized as follows:

• Anticipating Christmas generates attention. The commercials are seen as more relevant and lead to a more positive impression of the brand.
• The increased attention doesn’t currently pay off because brand recall is too weak to create a more substantial effect for the brand, than regular advertising.
• Christmas advertising must contain even stronger brand cues. This can be done in various ways, for example, making explicit use of unique brand characteristics (more often), showing
  the brand more often, longer or earlier, or mentioning the brand more often in the commercial.
• And last but not least: the brand needs to fit perfectly with the contextual story of the ads. It must feel natural to consumers, making it easier for them to understand the message and
  recall the brand.