East London | SunMatrix Ramble

Welcome back. Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Now for a great start to 2014.

Taking off from my last post, here are a series of holiday action videos created by agencies around the world in their lead up to Christmas 2013. By “holiday action videos” I mean greetings built around a single visible action or interaction, not a passive message.

Holiday greetings that behave like products

The mechanism across this set is simple. Use the “holiday card” moment as permission to ship a stunt, an installation, or an interactive video that people can experience rather than merely watch.

In global agency culture, holiday cards are a low-stakes sandbox for experimentation that teams can ship fast and share widely.

The real question is whether your greeting can demonstrate something people can experience, not just a sentiment you can post.

This format is worth copying because it turns a seasonal hello into proof of craft.

Why this format keeps working

These pieces earn attention because they trade greeting-card sentiment for an observable action. Put in a coin. Click a button. Gather people in front of a webcam. One clear trigger, one visible result.

Extractable takeaway: If you want something to travel during peak-season noise, design a one-step interaction that produces a visible payoff, and make the payoff easy for someone else to describe in a sentence.

Christmas Chocolate Coin Factory by W+K London

Wieden+Kennedy London turned their Hanbury Street office window into a Christmas installation. Passers-by who inserted a 1 pound coin into Dan & Dave’s Chocolate Coin Factory activated the machine on display which then dispensed a special gold Belgian chocolate coin at the other end. All the money collected from this coin factory was donated towards building a new playground for Millfields Community School in Hackney, East London.

Disrupted Christmas by Holler

Holler, an agency from Sydney, created a live interactive installation that gave the general public a chance to disrupt the agency as it worked throughout the day. Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) units were hacked and hooked up to the Internet via IP cameras. Then key members of the agency were connected to the EMS units, and the Internet via a live stream. The public could then watch the agency staff online and instantaneously zap them at will with the click of a button.

For each disruption the agency donated $1 to The Factory, a local community centre with a long history of supporting socially and economically disadvantaged local residents.

The More the Merrier by Publicis Groupe

The Publicis Groupe was back again with another Maurice Lévy holiday video. This time they worked with DigitasLBi to create a video that uses your webcam to detect how many faces are watching together, and then adapts the video based on the number of viewers.

The Epic Christmas Split by Delov Digital

Delov Digital from Hungary used Chuck Norris to top Jean-Claude Van Damme’s epic Volvo split with the help of some serious digital enhancement.

A repeatable structure for next year’s greeting

Give the audience one trigger. A single action that anyone can explain and repeat.
Make the payoff visible. Something that changes on-screen or in the real world, immediately.
Design for retellability. If the idea cannot be summarized in one sentence, it will not spread.
Let craft do the selling. Use the holiday excuse to demonstrate what you can build, not just what you can say.

A few fast answers before you act

What makes “holiday action videos” different from normal holiday ads?

They are built around a visible action or interaction. The greeting is the excuse. The experience is the asset that people talk about and share.

Why do agencies use holiday cards as a playground for experimentation?

The stakes are lower and the audience is receptive. That creates room to try unusual formats, technical tricks, and interactive mechanics that would be harder to justify in a client campaign.

What is the common mechanism across the best ones?

One clear trigger and one clear payoff. Insert a coin and get a coin back. Click a button and something happens. Add more people and the video changes.

How do you choose a mechanic that people will actually try?

Pick a one-step trigger that feels effortless, then make the payoff obvious within seconds. If someone cannot explain both in one sentence, the interaction will not travel.

How do you keep it from feeling like a gimmick?

Anchor the interaction in a simple human reward. Delight, togetherness, surprise, or a small act of good. Then keep the mechanic effortless so the idea does not collapse under friction.

Red Stripe, a Jamaican lager brand, transforms an ordinary-looking East London corner shop into a singing, dancing musical extravaganza. Products across the shop turn into instruments that burst into a melody when a customer selects a Red Stripe. Noodle pots become maracas. Bottles turn into trumpets. Cans become xylophones.

To capture the surprise, 10 hidden cameras record customer reactions as the shop “comes alive.”

The real question is how you turn a routine purchase into a moment people want to retell and share.

This kind of retail theatre works best when the shopper triggers the show through a product choice, and the documentation is designed to scale the moment beyond the store.

The shop becomes the media

This is not a poster on a wall. It is the environment itself performing. The moment of selection triggers the show. The shelf becomes the stage.

That shift matters because it makes the brand moment inseparable from the act of buying. It is shopper marketing that feels like entertainment, not persuasion. Here, shopper marketing means designing the buying environment so the act of choosing the product creates the brand experience.

The trigger is the product choice

The smartest part is the mechanic. Nothing happens until the customer chooses the product. That makes the experience feel personalised, even though it is engineered. Because the trigger is the shopper’s own choice, the surprise reads as a reward, not a push.

It also makes the story instantly explainable. “When you pick up a Red Stripe, the shop turns into a band.”

If you can explain the trigger in one sentence and show real reactions, the activation comes with built-in distribution.

In retail and FMCG environments, the point-of-sale moment is where intent becomes action, and where a brand can earn attention without interrupting it.

Why hidden cameras make the idea travel

The in-store performance is powerful, but it is local. The video is what scales it. Real reactions signal authenticity, and the format becomes shareable proof that the stunt actually happens.

Extractable takeaway: If you want the idea to travel, design the filmed proof as part of the concept. Authentic reactions do the credibility work that polished edits cannot.

Steal the point-of-sale trigger

Trigger at the shelf. Make the point-of-sale moment the trigger, not the end of the journey.
Instrument the environment. Convert ordinary objects into a surprising behaviour, so the setting becomes memorable.
Film for scale. Capture genuine reactions, then let the video do the distribution work.

A few fast answers before you act

What happens in the Red Stripe Musical Extravaganza?

An East London corner shop turns into a musical performance. Shop items become instruments that play when a customer selects a Red Stripe.

What turns into instruments?

Noodle pots become maracas. Bottles become trumpets. Cans become xylophones.

How is it captured?

Ten hidden cameras record customer reactions.

What is the core mechanic that makes it work?

The product selection triggers the performance, so the “brand moment” happens at the exact point of purchase.