5 Interactive Holiday Campaigns We Love

1. Spotify – a Year in Music

Spotify is a brand that has long been praised for it’s user engagement and loyalty. By consistently offering value to their users through features like their personalized Discover Weekly playlists, Spotify has led the pack in anticipating user desires and rising to meet those challenges head on. Last holiday season was no different as Spotify outperformed all past campaigns with Your Year in Music, an interactive New Year’s micro-site that allowed users to compile all their musical data for the entire year, view overall trends, and share images of their data on social media.

This combination of interactivity and personalization, coupled with a strong simplified design and an intuitive user experience, scored Spotify an amazing overall engagement time of 15,000 days, with over 5 million users spending almost 5 full minutes on the site. The campaign also received a total of 7 advertising and marketing industry leadership awards including a Webby Award for Best Advertising User Interface.
Take a note from Spotify’s playbook:

• Offer your customers content that provides value and enhances their feelings of loyalty with your brand
• Leverage interactive content and personalization to your advantage.
• Keep your design simple and your customer’s experience in mind.
  

2. Kate Spade – “The Waiting Game”
Kate Spade paired with actress Anna Kendrick to create a fun, interactive video called “The Waiting Game” for the 2014 Holiday Season. The video features Kendrick humorously passing the time after locking herself out of her apartment following a long day of shopping. In an interactive version of this video, as she finds her way back in using a rope made from clothes, users can click on products they’re interested in and receive information and shopping links at the end.

By leveraging an interactive component and adopting an emotional approach that engages a user’s sense of humour, Kate Spade connected with their consumers around the holidays in a light hearted way. The ad, as part of an overall series of similarly structured campaigns, increased the company’s sales by 36.4% during the third quarter and scored them memorability and loyalty points with their consumers.
Take a note from Kate Spade’s playbook:

• Connect with your consumers and adopt a general holiday strategy, rather than one aimed a certain holiday.
• Engage customers with lighthearted uplifting material.
• Strengthen your brand awareness and grow revenue by utilizing dynamic, interactive content.
  

3. Target – Bullseye’s Playground
In 2014, Target and Google teamed up to create a holiday-themed, interactive, gamified campaign called Bullseye’s Playground. The app allowed users to play via their mobile devices from anywhere, although visiting a Target store allowed players to activate special codes and unlock special characters or levels. In a certain number of stores, Google’s prototype Project Tango Development Tablets turned the aisles into an immersive 3D experience.

Target brought success to their holiday campaign by identifying important mobile trends. They leveraged the facts that 87% of shoppers use their phone to gather information before visiting a store and 75% of shoppers use their mobile devices while shopping by creating an interactive game experience that encouraged users to play both at home and at the store. Target also drove consumers to their locations by offering them items of value within the game if they redeemed in-store codes. Finally, they cultivated brand recognition by promoting their most recognizable mascot, Bullseye, and utilizing interactivity to offer value to their customers in the form of entertainment, growing customer loyalty.
Take a note from Target’s playbook:

• Examine your customer’s mobile and digital use trends to conceptualize a campaign that finds your consumer where they are already spending time online.
• Offer your customer value through entertainment and try a gamified interactive experience.
• Don’t be afraid to be innovative!
  • Target’s 3D in-store experiences connected the digital and physical worlds in a unique way, turning their aisles into a tech hot spot and an office party talking point.
    

4. Not on the High Street – Gift-o-matic
Last year, UK gift company Not on the High Street dominated the holiday marketing game with a one-day installment called the Gift-o-Matic. The physical installation was essentially a Twitter powered vending machine installed near train stations. Users were prompted to tweet from the location and use a set of hashtags like #petlover or #foodie, which determined the type of gift they received.

This campaign connected with consumers for a few key reasons, not the least of which being that they got free stuff! However, it also drove large amounts of social media traffic and activity, as well as captured the attention of many media outlets. Although the vending machine was only installed for one day, Not on the High Street had over 1,000 interactions.
Take a note from Not on the High Street’s playbook:

• Drive social media impressions and media coverage by thinking about how you could offer value to your customers in a way that will really matter to them.
  • Part of the Gift-o-Matic’s success came from the fact that it ran from December 20-21st, giving all those panicked last minute gift shoppers an easy solution to their problem.
    
    

5. Fruit of the Loom – The Rules of Underwear Giving
Fruit of the Loom is a company known for their tongue-in-cheek advertising style. They stayed consistent with that brand image for their 2014 holiday campaign, titled The Rules of Underwear Giving. The campaign outlined who is an appropriate recipient for underwear (family) and who isn’t (almost everyone else). It featured a humorous video spot and drove online engagement by leverage an interactive quiz that answered the question “Is this an appropriate person to give underwear to?”

By connecting to consumers on a humorous level, Fruit of the Loom stood out from the pack of heartstring-tugging emotional holiday ads and returned some levity to the season. Their dynamic online quiz used interactivity to drive further online impact of their campaign. Incentivizing users to take the quiz and share their results by offering them a $2 coupon helped Fruit of the Loom grow their campaign, and by extension, their brand image.
Take a note from Fruit of the Loom’s playbook:

• Don’t be afraid to keep things humorous this holiday season!
  • Especially if your product or service lends itself to a light hearted campaign, like Fruit of the Loom’s.
• Engage users with interactive digital elements and include components that call consumers to share on social media in order to maximize engagement and impressions.