The holidays are usually time for predictable advertising. The ads are full of your typical holiday elements. You’ve got Santa Claus giving out presents representing the brand’s goods on his famous red sleigh. You’ve got families gathered around Christmas trees eagerly ripping open gifts of the company’s products. And you’ve got dancing models on screen prancing and grooving to the traditional holiday songs that fill the air while they wear the goods the company’s pushing. And that’s pretty much it – Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and carols.
But the pandemic complicates things. For one, the economy is down. People have lost jobs, money is tight, and stimulus checks have likely already been spent. Going into the holidays, COVID-19 rates have spiked and will likely only get worse during times when family gatherings are expected. Increase rates means that we are likely to go into another lockdown and businesses will continue to be negatively impacted. All of this means that families have less money to go around and spend on gifts. The holidays are more likely to be depressed than in previous recent years.
But it’s not just having fewer dollars to spend on nice things, it’s also the change in the gatherings itself. The holidays are traditionally a time where extended family gather and people travel miles to be at home with family. But this year, for many people, that’s not an option and it’s not safe for them to do so. They will need to make do with long distance connections, video calls, and phone calls. How do you capture the warmth and fuzzy feelings of the holidays knowing that many, if not most, people will not have that experience.
Images of extended family and friend gatherings would not only feel disconnected from the reality that people are facing, but it would also feel absolutely tone deaf. It would look like the company making a statement that perhaps the pandemic shouldn’t be taken seriously or that family time is worth the risk of exposing yourself and others to the virus. Either way, it’s a bad idea.
So what do you do? One solution that Walkers Crisps used for this year’s Christmas advertisement is to capture a traditional element of the holidays and put it to use. Their advertisement was entirely based on the Christmas carol. More specifically, they substituted Santa Claus with a red van stuffed with baskets full of their new sausage roll flavored crisps. They substituted Santa Claus himself with a man wearing a Christmas hat and a onesie covered in images of sausage rolls. They put together a group of carolers who went door to door singing parodies of holiday music while they described how amazing these new crisps are.
The genius in this advertisement is that they used a holiday element that is inherently pandemic friendly. All of the carolers were social distancing during their singing. They stood six feet apart on the lawns of the homes they visited. The leader rang the bell then stepped six feet back. But unlike most social distancing we see at restaurants and in stores, it didn’t look awkward. In fact, if you weren’t paying attention, you didn’t really realize that’s what they were doing. The ad made it look so natural.
The fact that caroling happens outside also leverages pandemic best practices. One of the things we’re encouraged to avoid during these COVID-19 times is indoor gatherings. But picking caroling, Walkers chose an activity that we can safely take part in and needs to happen outdoors.
The other element they took into consideration is the lack of physical interaction in the gift giving. Part of the group caroling is that they left baskets of crisps on the doorsteps of the homes they visited. Had this ad happened a year ago, I’m certain that the baskets would be handed to the people whose homes they visited. But this year, they were dropped off and then the carolers walked away. The people at home waited a moment then picked up the crisps once the carolers were far enough away. Again, if you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have noticed this intentionally pandemic-aware detail. But there it was.
As a consumer, I must admit that the ad did not make me want to try the crisps. The ad was designed for the UK audience who’s much more familiar with the sausage roll than the American audience. But as a digital marketer, I have to admire the way the ad successfully captured the spirit of the holidays, leveraged a popular and beloved part of Christmas, and still managed to incorporate pandemic best practices in their execution. Well done Walkers.
https://digiday.com/marketing/its-difficult-to-make-the-right-call-the-many-faces-of-the-u-k-s-coronavirus-era-christmas-advertising/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCpQ_DBiEpw
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