8 Creative Winter Marketing Campaigns

Joy to the world the winter campaigns have come! With so many brands advertising their holiday offers, businesses need to step it up to create successful holiday marketing campaigns customers will remember for years to come.

Get creative with your winter marketing campaigns, whether you’re using online and offline strategies. Here are ten successful holiday marketing campaigns you can draw inspiration from for your own winter campaigns:

1. Winter Skin Care

Neutrogena’s Winter Love mobile campaign is one of the most successful January marketing campaigns of 2015. The skincare brand created a mobile app that reminded customers to put on hand cream whenever the phone temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius. It also gave suggestions for suitable products, focusing on Neutrogena products, to moisturise and protect your hands from the cold.

The winter marketing campaign resulted in its highest ever market share of 17.8% in the hand and body category. It also reached over three million users and 5.5 million impressions.

2. Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Winter marketing campaigns, especially for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are mostly known for advertising huge sales, deals, and discounts. However, the outdoor retail brand has taken a bold stand against holiday consumerism by closing its doors during Black Friday. 

REI announced in their online and offline channels, including their website, social media, and billboards and banners, that they are not taking part in Black Friday madness. They encouraged their customers to spend Black Friday with their families outdoors instead of tracking down deals. REI also gave their employees a day off so they could join the winter festivities.

3. 12 Days of Christmas Flavours

Take inspiration from Krispy Kreme’s holiday campaign if you’re looking for marketing ideas for January 2019. Producing limited-edition holiday items is one of the best ways to catch people’s attention and generate revenue during the holiday season. Krispy Kreme’s winter marketing campaign took advantage of the 12 Days of Christmas theme and created 12 exclusive doughnut flavours for the holiday season.

Their winter marketing campaign featured holiday food packaging, gift coupons, and a fun promotional video to introduce the different doughnut flavours and designs. Krispy Kreme’s campaign may be simple but it is persuasive and makes us want to grab a dozen doughnuts to take home or for the office.

4. Community Christmas Cheer

The holidays are all about giving more than receiving. TD Bank’s #MakeTodayMatter campaign for Thanksgiving showed themselves giving $30,000 to 24 people in 24 communities across the United States and Canada. Each individual had one day to use the money to give back to their community.

This successful holiday marketing campaign gained over 3.5 million hits online, with many praising it for its heartwarming content. It tapped into the true spirit of the holiday season. 

5. Gift Giving Hints

If you haven’t found the perfect book to give to your friends, family, or significant other for the holidays, don’t worry. Barnes & Noble has you covered. Their winter marketing campaign #BNGiftTip aimed to help those looking for good book recommendations for their loved ones.

The campaign was an instant hit among its customers. Not only was a great example of excellent customer service, but it also encouraged an open and honest form of engagement with Barnes & Noble customers.

6. Festive Sleepover

People always expect amazing winter marketing campaigns from the soda brand, and Coca-Cola never disappoints.

In 2017, they decided to hold a contest where the lucky winner would win a sleepover in Coca-Cola’s famous Christmas truck. They partnered with LateRooms.com, a hotel reservations website, where fans can explain why they’re “the Ultimate Christmas Fan.” Their exclusive sleepover prize also includes stockings stuffed with gifts, a delicious Christmas dinner and breakfast, and tickets to Coca-Cola London Eye. 

7. Elf Yourself

The most successful holiday marketing campaigns allow customers to have fun and laughs. Every year, Office Depot launches its Elf Yourself holiday campaign to spread the holiday joy and to increase engagement with their customers.

Customers can upload photos of them and their friends’ heads on the website. The website will then put the heads on a dancing elf. They can send them to their friends and family to give them a good laugh for the holidays.

8. Holiday Hijacking

It pays to be a little more daring to create successful holiday marketing campaigns. The German-owned grocery store Lidl took their holiday advertising to the next level by using guerilla marketing.

Lidl hijacked their competitors’ advertisements by posting their own promotions on top of the billboard. The ad promoted lower prices for the same products their competitors were advertising. 

It was a bold move, considering the proximity of the new advertisements to Lidl’s competition. According to Lidl’s commercial director Ryan McDonnell, they wanted to emphasise Lidl’s commitment to providing the best value and quality to their customers. This winter marketing campaign by Lidl shows its fearlessness and playfulness as a brand.  

There is something about the wintertime that brings out the creativity in all businesses. We hope these ten examples have inspired you to create timeless winter marketing campaigns!