RIPPLE EFFECT

Expectations of Big Holiday Ads Are Anything But

January 7th, 2010

During the Holiday season we can expect many companies to put forth their best attempts at marketing all year. They try to evoke a variety of emotions, from silly and comedic ads to marketing that aims at tugging on the heart strings and everything in between.  This year, a lot of focus was on the difficulty of getting through these hard economic times, and for good reason. After last year’s dismal Holiday season and most peoples aversion to spending a lot of money, companies are spending big bucks on advertising that will pull the crowds they need. As you’d expect, Walmart and Target top the list in a survey for the best Holiday ads. This year, Walmart reclaimed the number one spot from Target, who had held that position for the past 3 years.

Personally, I was not particularly blown away by any of the commercials I’ve seen thus far. I feel that a lot of companies played it safe. With times being as tough as they are, its easy to upset customers or tarnish brand loyalty.  However by avoiding any topics that might upset customers, many commercials were forgettable.  To me this was unfortunate, because watching a truly heart felt Christmas commercial makes me nostalgic about how excited I used to get as a kid.

Although nothing really stood out amongst the holiday hype, it apparently didn’t matter. Many of the bigger retail chains were able to make sales based on brand loyalty. So even though  creative and over-the-top holiday marketing is expected this time of year, it’s not what ultimately kept stores from finishing strong in 2009.

Regardless of this years lack luster ads, I’ve decided to post a couple that I thought were fun (Not all of them are from this year because I had such a hard time finding the few that I thought were good):

Waiting for Santa

Confession of a Bad Girl

Happy Thanksgiving

Holiday Horror

Tags: Holidays, Target, Walmart

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Advertising, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.