10 Global Christmas Marketing Campaign Trends Using Music – An Interesting Case Study for Nigerian Brands (Part I)
There’s typically a lot of commercial activity during the Christmas festive period, and one of the best ways to position your brand to take advantage of the flurry is through an effective Christmas campaign.
Brands around the world have, over time, executed incredible Christmas campaigns with music choices that have contributed significantly to the campaign’s success. Let’s take a look at some of the top campaigns.
John Lewis – Man on the Moon (2015)
John Lewis is a proven master at Christmas campaigns. The brand’s 2015 Christmas ad remains one of the best, and the music it employs plays a key role. Soundtracked with Aurora’s “Half the World Away” (a cover of the more popular version released by Oasis in 1999).
This ad not only adopted a popular song for its market with well-known lyrics, but this softer version also contributes to the emotion it intends to invoke in viewers. According to Marketing Week, John Lewis generated over £100m in sales in the week following the ad’s release. The ad also gained 22 million views in its first week. The popularity of this campaign surpassed that of the previous year. Other industry leaders immediately recognised its brilliance and effectiveness, mostly due to its emotional qualities.
ShowMax – Ode to the Holidays (2016)
Good music in African Christmas campaigns has also been proven to work wonders. Especially since music is such an important element of general African culture, in this ad, we see the actors perform original lyrics promoting ShowMax to the tune of “Joyful Joyful” (music already in the public domain – a brilliant choice, because public domain music eradicates the necessity of paying licensing fees to composers). The lyrics are written to highlight the importance of Showmax entertainment during a typical Showmax holiday period, and its performance with a tune as well known as this brings it all together and makes it even more difficult to forget.
Coca-Cola – Holidays are Coming (1995)
This ad was so iconic that when Coca-Cola stopped running it, they received requests from customers asking them to continue Eventually, the brand decided to tour and make stops with the trucks every year across the UK. Last year was no exception. The original composition, which served as its soundtrack, perfectly aligned with the ad’s message of Coca-Cola lighting up and bringing joy to the holidays. Its catchy hook – “Holidays are coming” – makes it difficult to forget, and the lyrics are appropriately festive. In many places, the phrase has become synonymous with the holiday season, and in 2013, #holidaysarecoming was tweeted over 60,000 times.
IKEA – Silence the Critics
Culturally trending music genres have proven to be an effective way to reach younger audiences, and a grime track from D Double E did just that for IKEA here. This ad is our favourite example of how popular music styles can contribute to the success of campaigns and generate significant buzz, even though the music is not exactly festive.
Reactions to the ad on X (formerly Twitter) were posts like this and this. We think the ad was also rather effective because days after its release, there were posts like this linking the ad’s music directly to purchases.
Argos – The Book of Dreams (2019)
Utilising music your audience considers a classic can also be a real winner for festive campaigns. Once again, the music choice made the campaign. Given the popularity and versatility of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, it was perfect to employ it (with a slightly different drum arrangement) in crafting a story about how the gift of a drum set made dreams come true for a girl and her father.
The campaign aimed to promote Argos’ Christmas catalogue, renamed The Book of Dreams. An online hub of annual catalogues since 1974 was launched as part of the Christmas campaign. This (plus the music) effectively invoked nostalgia for the older audience who knew what catalogues were. A week later, the online hub had 9 million site visits.
How to Use Music in Your Campaigns
Let’s bring it home to you as a Nigerian brand seeking to put out an impactful Christmas campaign. To keep things simple, the best way to successfully use music in your Christmas campaigns is to ensure you have the right to use it for that purpose. Original tracks may be the easiest to acquire rights to as long as everyone who works on the track’s production is duly compensated and agrees to let your brand own or use the track.
Classic Christmas melodies may be in the public domain, depending on what year the version you intend to use was created. If they are, indeed, in the public domain, you would be able to use them freely.
Using existing music or creating alternate versions of existing music may prove the most beneficial since it will probably be tracks your audience is already familiar with. Depending on the circumstances, you may need to seek licences from record labels, performing artists, songwriters, producers, etc. It is often an intricate process that often requires existing relationships with people in the music business. And here’s where we come in.
At Afro Soundtrack, we can help make your Christmas campaign a reality by securing licensing rights to any song for you and having our team of composers and supervisors work on an original track, voice-over or instrumental for your campaign. Check out the second part of this article for the full scoop!
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