No one beats the holidays. No one.

One tends to cringe this time of the year when someone mentions shopping. The images that come to mind are aplenty. Pushy adults trample each other, children wail in the toy aisles, and over the top of it all, the blaring horns of “Sleigh Ride” plays on a continuous loop. It can be a nightmare. A friend recently complained about trying to go to the mall, just to quit when there wasn’t enough parking within the first half-mile of parking lot. It’s the holidays, and the chaos of shopping is a tradition as old as the Coca-Cola Santa.
Marketing during the holidays can be an interesting game. Many companies are made or broken depending on this time of year, and large sums of cash are thrown at the consumer in hopes of inspiring the want to buy and give, or in some cases, simply buy.
What makes holiday advertising interesting is that there is a bit of double branding going on. Not only do companies such as Old Navy, Lexus, and Target have to keep their own brand in mind, but also the general brand of the holidays. I mention Lexus because they did a particularly good job this year with their “best gift ever” campaign.

They used adorable children, classic “major” gifts from yesteryear, and visual effects to try and date the look of the video. It uses sentimentality of days gone by to communicate a familiar emotion, and offers the chance to recapture that today with a gift of a sleek new car (and it would work for me, too). They also stay very tight within their audience, too. Lexus is a higher end car manufacturer, and is more likely to appeal to the social class that has children who remember actually getting a live pony for Christmas. I was pumped about Castle Greyskull from He-Man. It’s a fine job of walking that line of what everyone expects of the holiday season while still keeping true to what the company is.
When one is approaching advertising within the holiday skew, it’s important to remember that in all likelihood people will relate to the season before they relate to the company. In my opinion, a misstep was made by Qwest this year.

The joke is that people are waiting in line, as if to see Santa, but it’s not Santa. It’s some guy in a blue Qwest vest (I didn’t think it was that clever either). The problem comes in two parts… first, the difference between the actual mall scene and the graphics with V/O are too severe to be cut together so frequently. It makes both stories hard to follow. But this is forgivable.
There is a special second problem though which strikes me as a bigger deal. The actual mall scene begins by tiptoeing around the idea of the holidays, then proceeds to ignore them the rest of the way out. There’s no attempt to make it into an occasion for giving. There is no holiday spirit. It even goes so far at the end to show that the father forgets about his little girl’s wish list.
The result is this. Remember what you’re playing to first. Christmas and the surrounding holidays might be one of the most strongly branded ideas in the history of man, and if you’re going to play in their realm, you better be willing to pay the proper homage.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a very merry, and I leave off with the warmth and joy of my favorite holiday video this year (it also goes to show you, if you stick with the holidays, they can be VERY good to you.)