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.
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.
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.
What to steal 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 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.