The Best Social Media Christmas Campaigns

Christmas is a fantastic opportunity for brands online to have fun, increase brand awareness and engage with their audience via social media.

It's often around this time of year that our clients such as Huel and Freddies Flowers will increase the amount of ad creative they need us to produce.

We see social campaigns in the form of festive giveaways, exciting offers, user- generated content and Christmas video campaigns, to name a few. But the most successful Christmas campaigns are the ones which hook audiences, either via interactive fun or heart-warming stories, and we’ve chosen 3 of the very best to (hopefully) inspire you when planning yours.

The 3 Best Social Media Christmas Campaigns:

1. Marks & Spencer: Pass The Parcel
2. Ted Baker: #tedselfie
3. John Lewis: Monty The Penguin

1. Marks & Spencer: Pass The Parcel 

Campaign Details 

In 2013, the hugely successful ‘Pass the Parcel’ Christmas Campaign was launched by Marks & Spencer, where their Facebook followers had the chance of winning one of the 3k prizes. This campaign was played by over 350k users and raised M&S’s Facebook count to an impressive 70K. 

The success of the first campaign led M&S to continue the campaign into the following years. The 2015 campaign saw a new, fresh approach which gamified a daily interaction with the brand online.

Requiring a playfully habitual swipe action or 'unwrap', customers had five unwraps a day leading a range of possible prizes – from money off online to discounts, £500 gift cards or specialty Christmas hampers.

The Results

The campaign helped to build the M&S brand as a Christmas favourite and significantly raised their online and offline presence. During the campaign, online conversions raised 8% and redemption of prizes in store meant a remarkable spike in footfall of nearly 15K additional customers.

Customer sentiment scores across social media channels were exceptionally high from a brand-building, engagement and customer journey point of view – even if they didn't win! 

This campaign gave M&S a very merry Christmas!

2. Ted Baker’s: #tedselfie

Campaign Details

Ted Baker launched their interactive scavenger hunt in 2014 where users needed to find the missing elves by visiting @TedsElfie on Instagram and participating in the ‘choose your own adventure’ style game.

Ted Baker created 32 unique Instagram accounts to motivate the users to hunt for elves and win prizes. 

The Results

The campaign saw huge engagement from Instagram followers, with 14.5k competition entries and 37k interactions on the #TedsElfie hashtag throughout this period. Not only does this indicate the success potential of creating custom festive hashtags for your Christmas campaigns, but it also demonstrates the importance of an engaging and interactive social media presence. 

3. John Lewis: Monty The Penguin and Other Christmas Staples

Campaign Details

As well as their famous Christmas TV ads, John Lewis are also known for their touching campaigns across social media channels. 

One of their most successful Christmas campaigns was Monty The Penguin in 2014. The campaign centred on a penguin finding love, paired with engaging social media activity and Monty merchandise sold in-store.

The Results

This campaign was so popular that it gained 1.8m views on YouTube on its first day of release and has now racked up over 19 million views. Impressive right?

This video campaign not only captured their viewer’s attention in a matter of seconds, but it also allowed the brand to tap into viewer’s emotions and spread Christmas cheer in ways that text and image campaigns just can’t. Not only that, the video spread like wildfire across social media due to the YouTube ‘share’ feature. 

‍

Sound Good?

If you’d like to find out how we could help your business create successful, engaging video campaigns, schedule a call with a social media advertising expert today. At Aura Ads, we will do everything for you; from developing the creative concept to final delivery, our creative team exists to bring our ideas to life through beautifully bespoke direct response creative. 

For more campaign inspiration, here are a number of Christmas campaign ideas for your social media.