In a few days more and the merriest season of the year will be here. Yes, the countdown for Christmas has begun and we just can’t wait to see our social media profiles filled with uber-exciting & engaging Christmas campaigns.
Believe it or not, most brands have already spun their magic around social media Christmas campaigns all with one objective – to cheer up the target audience and bring out their festive spirit. For ages, big brands have been viewing this season as an opportunity to engage with people in an interactive conversation with their customers via social media platforms.
And in a fit of nostalgia (and awaiting this year’s campaigns), we here share with you the best Christmas social media campaign of all time that we’re able to get the festive mood right on point.
Best Social Media Christmas Campaigns Examples
1. Ted Baker’s #TedsElfie
Hashtag Campaign: #TedsElfie
A simple task – find the missing Elfie with only one hint that an Elfie was taken by Santa.
Ted Baker and POKE agency launched an interactive holiday social media campaign #TedsElfie, where users needed to find the missing elves by visiting @TedsElfie on Instagram and participating in the ‘choose your own adventure style game.
This made my day ? #tedselfie pic.twitter.com/P63pZyOQAr
— Alex (@alexlozano11_) October 18, 2014
The Mentioned game placed tags on visuals that aided users in finding the missing elves and on their success, they were rewarded with prizes. Ted Baker created 32 unique Instagram accounts to motivate users to hunt for elves and win prizes. As a result, Ted Baker got a whopping 14.5k competition entries and 37k interactions throughout this period.
2. Costa Coffee
Hashtag Campaign: #MerryCostaChristmas
Christmas comes with chilly vibes and a snowy spirit. And what’s better than a cup of hot coffee? Understanding this feeling, Costa Coffee launched their Christmassy hot drinks in their stores in their famous cup characters. They launched a new menu and of course, generated fantastic social media marketing campaigns around it.
@CostaCoffee Birthday girl! #merrycostachristmas #MerryChristmasToMe pic.twitter.com/QvCeqAam4S
— Helen W (@helwtigers) November 29, 2015
They have changed their app’s interface, brought the Christmas colours, and much more to add that magical and warm feel to their entire vibe.
3. Air Canada’s #ACGiftofHome
Hashtag Campaign: #ACGiftofHome
Air Canada’s #ACGiftofHome was a Christmas social media campaign of hope and bought tears to everyone living abroad. The motive behind the campaign was to give a socially driven holiday campaign to the customers, where Canadians who live in London gathered at a bar called Maple Leaf to get a taste of home.
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Thanks @AirCanada! Sending #BearHugs back from the @OHLRangers Teddy Bear Game tonight. #ACgiftofhome pic.twitter.com/qxOqFzkB6b
— Cam Linwood (@camlinwood) December 8, 2015
The official campaign video showed two Air Canada pilots entering a pub and giving round-trip tickets to everyone present to visit Canada for the holiday season. Furthermore, they also encouraged the customers to post their own stories with the #ACGiftofHome hashtag.
With this merry Christmas campaign, more than 200 people were able to go back to their homes for the holidays.
It was an immensely successful UGC marketing strategy that helped Air Canada in brand building, displaying social proof, increasing engagement, and accelerating revenue. Leveraging UGC through user-generated content platforms nowadays is the best solution to amazing and effective marketing campaigns.
4. Kate Spade: #MissAdventure
Hashtag Campaign: #MissAdventure
Kate Spade’s integrated Xmas social media campaign is as luxurious and outstanding as her products. Her New-York based brand released a video titled “Joy Ride” starring Zosia Mamet and Twitter sensation Anna Kendrick. The campaign was called #MissAdventure, and the video showed Anna Kendrick searching for her lost keys while showing the brand’s clothes and accessories.
come in from the cold and watch the full #missadventure episode (and shop all the looks!) https://t.co/6uKmAIiAFu pic.twitter.com/UFDAFoeS1O
— kate spade new york (@katespadeny) November 13, 2017
The best part about this interactive video was that viewers could purchase any of the Kate Spade products featured in the video simply by clicking on them.
5. Big Bazaar
Hashtag Campaign: #BanoKisiKaSanta
Big Bazaar is an Indian retail chain that came up with a Christmas hashtag campaign #BanoKisiKaSanta. It revolves around the gifting seasons. They always remind people to play Santa and gift something to their loved ones and underprivileged children as charity.
With this, they woke the users’ sentiments, stood up for a cause, and touched many peoples’ hearts.
Nothing makes you happier than seeing those little eyes widen with joy. Share your love and gifts this season. #BanoKisikaSanta, buy a gift now: https://t.co/qANV5nLwti pic.twitter.com/tsZK3SUgwV
— Big Bazaar (@BigBazaar) December 23, 2017
6. UPS #WishesDelivered
Hashtag Campaign: #WishesDelivered
UPS campaign Wishes Delivered was an initiative to make the dreams of customers into reality. Customers were asked to upload their holiday wishes along with the hashtag #wishesdelivered on social media and these same wishes were fulfilled. The wishes were granted to the customers by UPS. Moreover, every special wish uploaded using the #wishesdelivered hashtag raised money (starting from $1) for several non-profit organizations such as Boys & Girls Club of America, The Salvation Army, and Toys for Tots.
.@UPS Delivers Wishes And Gives Back This Holiday Season – #WishesDelivered : https://t.co/pViM0N8lu5 pic.twitter.com/cXj2ceq25t
— UPS News (@UPS_News) December 24, 2018
In 2014, the Wishes Delivered campaign “Driver for a Day” story went viral on the social media platforms. The story highlighted a four-year-old Carson who captured everyone’s attention by becoming UPS’s youngest driver and he drove his tiny little UPS truck. Likewise, another four-year-old leukemia patient drove a tiny UPS truck.
7. Debenhams
Hashtag Campaign: #YouShall
The holiday season is very important for retail stores. This charming advertisement by Debenhams featured on the top 25 campaigns for Christmas. This ad features the cinderella love story in the digital landscape with smartphones!
They portrayed the power of social media and launched the wide Christmas collection and captured the festive feeling effortlessly.
8. Emirates Airlines
Hashtag Campaign: #christmaswithemirates
Emirates is famous for its luxury experience with its lounges, flights, and of course Christmas surprises. They share a Christmas message every year and convey that a Christmas vacation should be relaxed. So, when you fly with them you get treats and goodie bags.
Their campaign got a whopping 150K+ views on Facebook. They also promoted their campaigns across multiple social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram
We are taking Christmas to new heights with our ‘A-tree-80’. Happy Holidays! #FlyEmiratesFlyBetter #ChristmasWithEmirates pic.twitter.com/plBBvnWTlo
— Emirates Airline (@emirates) December 22, 2019
9. Heineken
Hashtag Campaign: #sparkmyparty
Heineken once took one step forward with their holiday marketing campaign and displayed their Social Christmas tree. People could record their message or choose a Christmas card which was then displayed on the tree. They further took it to their social media marketing campaigns and ran it on Facebook as well.
This tree showcased a connection between online and offline social interaction, which got Heinekin the personal touch, greetings, and engagement they expected.
The biggest thank you to @Heineken_US for #SparkMyParty !!!!! pic.twitter.com/qv0REAEHLD
— Michael Rutledge (@RutledgeMj) December 6, 2014
10. John Lewis #ManOnTheMoon
Hashtag Campaign: #ManOnTheMoon
Britain’s one of the most anticipated Christmas campaigns, John Lewis’s #ManOnTheMoon was designed by Adam & Eve/DDB. It told a story of a man on the moon and a young girl who spots him through her telescope. Miraculously, it conveyed the message of love and kindness to the people and motivated them to find special gifts for their loved ones.
This campaign was conducted in partnership with Age UK’ to raise awareness about the issue of loneliness amongst elderly folks and encourage people to support them. The brand supported the partnership with in-store and online activity and donated proceeds from the sale of select Christmas merchandise to the cause.
Absolutely love it! Dee did an amazing job and I couldn’t be happier ?? #angelsandairwaves #manonthemoon #avatattoo #angelsandairwavestattoo @AVABandOfficial @tomdelonge pic.twitter.com/xdF7KK9Can
— Domo (@Domogibo) October 14, 2019
Another interesting phase of the same social media christmas campaigns was that it opened moon pop-ups in 11 stores, where shoppers were able to take photos with a lunar backdrop and learn about the moon as well as Age UK.
11. Kitkat
Hashtag Campaign: #ABreakForHaveABreak
Here comes the best example of all. Their tagline in itself depicts Have a Break Have a KitKat. Which was taken quite seriously in their holiday marketing campaign. They encouraged people to take a break through a simple voice-over YouTube video campaign they ran.
TIP: Generate Natural sounding voiceovers using text to speech software easily.
The video had a simple voice-over without any visuals asking people to get away from all the gatherings, small talks with relatives, expensive decorations, and not-so-pocket-friendly supermarket visits and take a genuine quiet break doing nothing but eating KitKat. Surely stole our hearts away!
enjoying my break 😊 #abreakforhaveabreak @KITKAT pic.twitter.com/zEji9Nk32F
— silviah (@soolpiah) March 25, 2021
12. Coca-Cola – Make Someone Happy
Campaign: Make Someone Happy
Coco-Cola is well-known for its attractive as well as engaging best Christmas social media campaigns that never fail to touch everyone’s heart. In the year 2014, Coco-Cola dusted off an abstract Sundblom Santa Claus and inspired people to look beyond the gifts. This Christmas social media campaign encouraged the millennials to do little meaningful things for the people around them and make them happy.
They made a 60-second TV ad to highlight kindness and togetherness as important elements and these are two things that make an individual happy. The video shows Santa Claus enjoying a chilled Coca-Cola and how he observed people helping out each other and spreading happiness through small gestures.
Coco-Cola also did limited edition packaging which featured Santa Claus. They also organized their traditional-style caravan tour, where everyone could click a picture with Santa Claus on the coke truck.
13. McDonald’s
Hashtag Campaign: #NotSoSecretSanta
Mcdonald’s went for a more creative approach and came up with the hashtag campaign #NotSoSecretSanta. This well-planned and executed holiday marketing campaign began with offline hoardings across multiple cities. They took this to social media and asked its consumers to tag friends who needed that Christmas cheer.
People who posted using their hashtag won free goodies. Their giveaway spark the interest of a lot of Twitter users and made their Christmas campaign a success.
So..I may or may not have went to McDonald’s. I will say the bucket is cute but missing that lid. #McDonalds #halloweenbucket pic.twitter.com/3a8nqgRNyj
— Mamini (@LadyMamini) October 18, 2022
14. Starbucks
Hashtag Campaign: #redcups
This coffee chain always blows away our minds with its themed red cups, decorations, and holiday treats. Their social media handles are filled with excitement and Christmas vibe. They stood up for an environmental cause and came up with reusable cups for a holiday beverage. They created a hashtag for every holiday drink like #redcups
#redcups baby!! 🎅🏾✨☕️🎄 pic.twitter.com/oQmkMCR9Hv
— Kris #Heated🧛🏾🧙🏾♀️🧟♂️🎃 (@Kris27jam) November 4, 2021
Users posted on their social media using the hashtag and a photo of their new reusable cups which got them tons of User-generated content and a lot of excitement.
15. Marks and Spencer: #FollowTheFairies
Hashtag Campaign: #FollowTheFairies
Marks and Spencer’s social media Christmas campaign was all out and successful in giving special joy to people on the holiday season. Their video campaign showed two fairies who brought hope and happiness in people’s lives. The fairies were shown helping people change their dull life and make their wishes come true.
Before the campaign began, Marks and Spencer started sending anonymous wishes to people via Twitter. The wishes built a momentum of kindness among all sorts of groups and it gained more than 37,000 followers in a span of a month.
@thetwofairies my daughter loved this reverse graffiti at southbank #followthefairies pic.twitter.com/8Mfd9XX43B
— Rob (@roburdick) March 7, 2016
Also Read: 7 Easy Social Media Marketing Ideas for Christmas
16. Calvin Klein
Hashtag Campaign: #CkHoliday
This brand is renowned for its extensive collection of content creator and influencer marketing campaigns. This Christmas they collaborated with many influencers to show their Christmas gift guide. They used the hashtag #CkHoliday to promote the same.
#CKHOLIDAY on lock 🔓Emili Sindlev unwraps our must-have #CALVINKLEIN accessory: the leather studded Lock bucket bag.
— calvinklein (@CalvinKlein) December 16, 2019
Share your holiday moments with us ▷ #MYCALVINS
Explore more #CALVINKLEIN gifting at https://t.co/ZElG4LsRnb:
Bag [US, EU]: https://t.co/KtWF54wZaW pic.twitter.com/YqPF239h0d
They posted a series of video ads on YouTube using #MyCalvins and posted a party in New York inviting numerous influencers who further posted more content for CK using their hashtag. This classic move for Christmas marketing not just with social media but also offline events created a buzz and motivated more people to buy CK gifts.
17. Google: Santa Tracker
Hashtag Campaign: #santatracker
The global search engine giant, Google takes its creative ambition upward and commemorated events all around the world. So they came up with the Google Santa Tracker which is a microsite created by Google developers to foster and entertain kids. Their games, stories, and easy connection with Google home engaged a lot of kids.
This stellar campaign tells every kid where Santa is delivering gifts currently. This combination of storytelling and technology got this campaign in the top 25 Christmas campaigns.
9PM Update: Santa has made it to the East Coast. #SantaTracker pic.twitter.com/HXjl60kLDQ
— Anthony Copeland (@WeatherManAC) December 25, 2021
18. Disney: From Our Family to Yours
Hashtag Campaign: #FromOurFamilyToYours
Disney’s holiday marketing campaign brought culture, history, and holiday spirit together in this ad. They took advantage of the long-standing name and took us back to 1940. The video goes on, we see a kid growing old until she becomes a senior citizen. She keeps handing down a Disney character plush toy to her daughter and then granddaughter.
The granddaughter does not appreciate it much until she’s a young adult. She realizes how important it is to her grandmother and restores it to its glory. And gifted it to her grandmother on Christmas. Their emotional and heart-touching video grabbed the attention of more than 3 million viewers on YouTube.
I’M CRYING TEARS TF#FromOurFamilyToYours ✨ #DisneyChristmasAd2020 pic.twitter.com/ix6j1lDbUZ
— luigi (@Iuigiboy) November 9, 2020
How To Leverage User-Generated Content For Festive Season/Holiday Marketing
The holiday season is a great but challenging time for marketers where they have to push their creative thresholds to attract and engage users as much as possible so that it can help them increase their conversions & sales.
User-generated content gets shared immensely during the festive season as users are excited about holidays and share their shopping activities, travel images & videos, ideas & opinions, experiences, and much more.
To the brand’s advantage, so much of the UGC on social media revolves or concerns the brands. So, leveraging it for marketing is an excellent alternative to drive successful Christmas social media campaigns with users’ help.
But why use User-generated content?
During this festive and holiday season, brands are looking to make a tremendous amount of revenue, and to achieve this objective; they overwhelm the users with tons of promotional content that is of no value and can’t be trusted fully.
People need other people to guide them about their shopping activities as peer recommendations are trustworthy, authentic, and reliable. Even 9 out of 10 people tend to trust peer recommendations while making a purchase.
User-generated content plays an important role here as it delivers that much-needed social proof to the marketing efforts of the brands. Having UGC as a part of a marketing campaign makes it more trustful & authentic for users which helps in driving conversions & increased revenue.
How To Drive A Successful Hashtag Campaign With UGC
1. Build Trust & Authenticity
The first key advantage is that user-generated content is an experience-driven form of content that makes it trustworthy and reliable for the users.
So, your promotional hashtag campaign gets the validation of the users making it more real and reliable. It enhances the effectiveness and influence of campaign over the users.
2. Tap into Consumer Sentiments
Emotional campaigns fall like rain during this festive season as everyone is quite sentimental around this time of the year with the happiness to meet their families, friends, relatives, etc.
I thought there was lots of smiling, happy people at #MAExchange ??this week…the #DataAnalytics from our friends @taggboxSocial seem to back it up too ???Well done to everyone involved @ManhAssocNews? pic.twitter.com/6Ucjw0VAFe
— James Charles Ash (@JimboCharlieAsh) October 10, 2019
So, having an emotional campaign taps into consumer sentiments, and it is a psychologically proven fact that sentiments drive a person’s behavior like shopping, communications, etc.
User-generated content is the best form of content that can tap into consumer sentiments due to the humanized element it contains. It generates a feeling of empathy among the viewers.
3. Increase Engagement & Conversions
Finally, engagement and conversions are two objectives that are primary for any marketing campaign during this festive season. Engagement drives conversions, and to gain user engagement the campaign needs to have elements like entertainment, engaging content, social proof, and value for the users.
You can deliver exceptional value by encouraging users to share more content through participation in contests, giveaways, offers, and other gamification strategies.
It will drive both engagement and conversions, respectively, once the consumers get involved in such brand campaigns. It will increase your revenue leading to maximum returns with minimum investments.
4. Increase interaction with Carousel, Live Poll, and Story Quiz
One of the best Christmas social media campaigns to get your followers to interact is throwing questions and asking for their opinions on what they like to see or be posted on your socials.
Connect to your audience participants and learn about their likes, pain points, and preferences. Carousels work wonders in boosting engagement, so work with that to encourage followers to pick their favorite Christmas tradition through live polls and ask them to share their festive season stories by tagging you.
Aperol, known for summer cocktails, started a social media Christmas marketing campaign, #HappyAperolidays. This branded hashtag boosted their brand awareness and led to more encouraged user-generated content creation.
5. Craft Your Holiday Countdown Calendar
Create an online advent calendar to build anticipation in the lead-up to Christmas. This Christmas social media campaign strategy keeps your audience engaged and can help you keep them on their toes, waiting for more.
Much like traditional advent calendars, offer your audience daily surprises, deals, or holiday-themed content to unveil a new surprise, such as exclusive discounts, fun Christmas facts, or behind-the-scenes glimpses into your brand’s holiday preparations.
A Valuable UGC Hashtag Campaign for this Festive Season with Taggbox
Taggbox delivers an all-in-one solution to create attractive, engaging, and creative hashtag campaigns powered by all-powerful social media user-generated content. Taggbox, as a social media aggregator, discovers, collects, customizes, and displays content from different social platforms into a single social UGC feed.
For your hashtag campaign, you can create your custom hashtag to encourage users to share using that hashtag. Taggbox can then curate the content relating to that hashtag from different social media platforms. This hashtag feed can then be customized with amazing themes and display options
The best part is that with all the fantastic user-generated content, you also have the option to add your own branded custom content to your campaign. Besides, you get instant updates that keep your campaign’s content fresh and unique.
You get the option to customize the social UGC feed to make it more creative and interactive for the users.
Having the best of UGC in a single feed will increase the effectiveness leading to higher user engagement. This social UGC feed can be displayed on the following events but is not limited to them:
- Events
- Concerts
- Websites
- In-store displays
- Digital Out of Home displays
- Occasions & social gatherings
- Weddings
- Emails
With all these possibilities, customizations, and easy management, it is the best choice for creating hashtag campaigns for the upcoming festive/holiday season.
It is effortless to create your own unique social UGC feed and make an amazing hashtag campaign that can help you attract users, drive engagement, and ultimately increase your conversions and sales.
So, don’t miss out on this fruitful opportunity that can unlock the doors to a successful Christmas campaign this festive/holiday season with us.