120+ Christmas Cards & Campaigns from Advertising Agencies and Brands
Advertising Agency & Brand Christmas Ecards.  This is what millions of dollars worth of agency hours looks like. 120+ xmas cards & promotions created to celebrate the holiday season. History It started small in 2005 with just a series of links. In 2006 we added thumbnails but only managed 18 agency xmas cards In 2007 we stepped it up a notch to 68 xmas cards In 2008 I spent pretty much the weekend collating 120+ ecards for agencies. 2009 saw us waste 3 days putting this link bait piece on advertising agency Christmas cards together. 2010 was the biggest year yet with 170+ Agency Xmas E Cards 2011 was no different with 180+ agency and brand xmas campaigns Submit? If you want to be part of this for 2012 please send us your agency or brand xmas cards or promotions so submit@bannerblog.com.au Subject: Xmas 2012 If you want to save us even more time also send a 500x322 sized jpeg with your submission also. Pet Peeve? Agencies donating small amounts to charities or asking for views, likes or tweets to raise their donations but at a capped limit (which is very low). Not only that but mentioning the charity but not linking them or supplying any information as to why you should care about said charity. Last Updated: Jan 2, 2013 |
2012's Holiday Trends
The Big Losers in 2012's Holiday Trends
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| Bannerblog's Top Picks It's the same brief every year yet every year we're seeing new ideas. Here are Bannerblog's top picks for 2012. |
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Haddon Sundblom for Coca-Cola - The Man Who Painted Christmas This isn't a recent campaign but a fantastic round up of the iconic Coca-Cola art (and the artist behind it) that shaped the way we see Santa. |
| Cyriak: The Spirit of Christmas Do not attempt to watch this if there are kids around. You will scar them for life. |
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BBH [US]: Warm Wishes from Ad Land The voiceover just kills me. Well done to all on this one. BBH NY seem much more bitter than their UK counterparts. |
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EnjoyThis & Ryan Todd [UK]: Christmas Gifs 256 colors of animated awesome. |
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Swedish Post [SE]: Parcel Memory Game A giant, real time game of memory for prizes! The game took 30 hrs to complete and is a great tie in with the actual parcel service that the Swedish post provide. |
| Publicis Groupe [FR] : Maurice Lévy's Digital Wishes for 2013 After the click make sure to change quality, volume and go full screen. Quite well done and much funnier than we were expecting. The bar has been set Mr Sorrell. |
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The Hungry Castle [ES]: Shit Log (Have a shitty Christmas) I will not even try to explain this one as the agency has kindly created a video to do that. |
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The Poke [UK]: There's a problem with Brighton's Christmas lights Hahaha the UK has the monopoly on dick jokes for Xmas 2012. It's the subtly of this that works. |
The rest of the Christmas Ecards and Campaigns Presented in no particular order. |
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ISObar | Fighting Fish [FR]: Jean Paul Gaultier's Naughty Xmas You don't often see such fluid animation these days but when you do it feels special. I didn't want to enter the comp I just wanted to see all the funny interactive toys and games. |
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HI-RES [UK]: The Kitchen Project Hi-Res take their ongoing kitchen project and turn it into something festive. |
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FALLON [UK]: Check Your Bauballs Testicle shaped decorations for your tree. We love how the message is intertwined with the product. Sadly, they are SOLD OUT. Fallon please send us a pair, we'll pay! |
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Albion [UK]: Bauballs Awkward... you're also doing ball shaped tree decorations... We LOL'd at the Elf balls. These are sold out too. If anyone at Albion has some left we'd like to buy! |
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BBH [UK]: Home for Xmas Probably the best reward for donating this year. Your very own custom snow globe. I hope they post a gallery of the snow globes created. |
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ADIDAS | SID LEE [US]: The Cautionary Tale of Ebenezer Snoop This seemed to be posted everywhere and I suspect it's because ADIDAS got in early and posted this Nov 25th a full month before Xmas. There is even a Facebook app to go with this although you need to wait for the 4 minute video to finish before getting the link. That said 70,000 people used the app at the time of writing so it's done OK. |
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VML [AU]: Reindeer Races Arduino powered reindeers. Watch the demo trailer (which explains what's going on) or play the game. |
| Agent Provocateur [UK]: Secret Santa Love the Youtube comments like "That's very nice of you! Not many girls? think of getting their partner a tart for christmas!" |
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Pusher [AU]: Christmas Surprise With over 500,000 visitors this year (it was released in 2011) this simple idea has struck a chord with people. |
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Pusher [AU]: Memerry Christmas Pusher get two entries only because we didn't realise this one was new :) And with 500+ pages of submissions this has done well also. |
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Fusion [AU]: Lego Xmas The entire agency got all Legofied for the festive season. They also hand crafted each of the client gifts from Lego too. |
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Yoke Design[AU]: Ad-Vent Calendar Each day a new message up ad message to make you smile. |
| Lucinda Schreiber & Yanni Kronenberg [US]: Saks Fifth Avenue Window Display 2012 Inspired by this film clip for Firekites, Lucinda and Yanni worked on in 2009. |
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AnalogFolk: Radvent It's totally rad! Always remember to have someone update your Radvent calendar when the agency breaks for holidays! |
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Reborn [AU]: 5 Steps to Survive Christmas Not too sure about some of these "tips" |
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PNC | B-Reel | Deutsch [US]: Christmas Price Index A continuation of their popular series which has been a PNC tradition since 1984. |
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Various : The Christmas Experiements Everyday a new piece of HTML5 for your Christmasy enjoyment. |
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Hallway [AU]: Cake Club's Christmas Single Battle of the Ad Bands winner's latest single. Deck the Hallway. |
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DT [AU]: Christmas Party Apology Maker This was our fav "Forcing you to follow me on Twitter so I could improve my Klout score." |
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Coopers | KWP! [AU]: Beer Tree Mmmmmm beer tree |
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UNICEF | Y&R [NZ]: Naughty or Nice What a random person to use as Santa. I assumed it was UNICEF's NZ boss but this is him using the app. |
| Cadbury | DDB [NZ]: Clap your hands lights We missed this from 2011 but thought it was worth including here. |
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Schick | Y&R [NZ]: The Schibliminizer Use subliminal messages to get your wife to buy you a dirt bike! |
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Fenton Stephens [AU]: Christmas Rewound We've missed the live streaming event where you could select records to play (or torture) the office with. |
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Common Ventures [AU]: ACD App Let the ACD app take over and make the calls this Christmas break. |
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GPYR | LADDER [AU]: Homepage for the Homeless Set as your homepage and start shopping to help the homeless. Nice and simple. View case study |
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JSA | Smoke [AU]: A Bad Bad Christmas Looks like you're on Santa's naughty list. Do a deal with some dodgy elves. It's well shot and a little darker (which is good) than I was expecting. After all that effort, I actually thought the dancing Santa's on fire at the end were more interesting. |
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Australian Red Cross [AU]: Give a Gift that gives twice Thanks to Dumbs Ways to Die we can expect a lot more cute animations in 2013. |
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Bible Society [AU]: Live Light in 25 Words What do a convicted murderer, a magician, a holocaust survivor and sports legends have in common? They all helped pimp the bible this Christmas. More detail here on this random campaign. |
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Lego | Host [AU]: The Lost Brick One epic journey for a little piece of Lego |
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Publisis Life Brands Resolute [UK]: Never-ending card A holiday message for everyone |
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Variety | We Are Social [AU]: 10,000 Shares The challenge is now closed and the app is shutdown. Which is a shame because sharing doesn't stop at Xmas. I will say that charities need to be a little less hard sell when asking for participation. |
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Engine [AU]: Xmas House A charming little Xmas house to explore. I hope that's a 3D Augmented Reality Reindeer! |
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Thomas Dux | The Works [AU]: Pinterest Foodie Advent Calendar One of the few Pinterest campaigns this year. |
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Wasserman [CA]: Shopping Channel The fake TV demos are pretty funny and if I was Canadian I'd understand half these Ice Hockey Lock Out jokes. Sadly the agency only raised $200 :( |
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Piston [US]: The Legend of Douglas Firr Guess who drew the short straw at Piston. |
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Ayzenberg [US]: Punch a Holiday Bear Poor little bear |
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Mediaworks [NZ]: The Gifterator The old crappy gift generator on a web site trick. |
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Ogilvy [CH]: Santa Tattoo Find the wrong tattoo on Santa and win a tattoo voucher! |
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Framestore [AU]: Santa Tattoo Vimeo? Youtube? pfft Quicktime is where it's at! Another winner in the "agency short straw" competition. |
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Traffik [AU]: Xmas Photoshoot Contains the right amount of people but not enough driving for my liking. |
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Guru Studio [CA]: Belly Flop Short and sweet |
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Muji | Tha [JP]: Homemade Gingerbread a lice stream video of the Gingerbread town can be viewed on the site or watch this video for an overview. More info on PSFK. |
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Aardman | Google [UK]: Hangout with the Family Wallace and Gromit and the extended Aardman family meet up on Google Hangouts this xmas. It's the wrong browser Gromit! |
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Dos Equis [US]: Xmas Lights Theme Song From the same family in Texas that made this Gangnam style video! They've turned their lights into a media channel. More info here on PSFK. Here's another Gangnam light show although not as epic it's still pretty good. |
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GM [UK]: Christmas tree made out of Chevrolet Volt parts More info here. A video would have been nice for those that are not in London. |
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B-Reel [US]: Santa Tattoo You'll need a smart phone for this one. |
| Applegate [US]: Bacon Yule Log Mmmmmm bacon |
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| BBH | Barclays [UK]: Toy Overload The ad is charming. Make sure to watch the making of. There is also an IOS Augmented Reality app thrown in for good measure. More details at Adweek. |
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Chicago Children's Museum | EnergyBBDO [US]: Mister Imagine's Toy Store This looked like a lot of fun and a clever idea to get kids to use their imagination. |
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Old Navy [US]: Jordan Knight Before Xmas Jordan Knight and Boyz to Men. Old Navy brings out the big 80s guns. I feel lame that I needed to Google Jordan Knight to realise who he was. |
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Old Navy [US]: Griswold's Christmas The entire cast of Christmas Vacation in a fun series of ads. Chevy Chase is so hot right now. Softest Sweater | Plug in the Lights |
| AKQA [US]: Carol of the Bells AKQA stay classy with this mobile and tablet orchestra that you can actually download and compose yourself (well with friends with a lot of other mobile devices). They even teamed up with members of the Pacific Chamber Symphony and Music Director Lawrence Kohl to compose this. Hard to top their microwave effort though. |
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Outback Steakhouse | Deutsch [US]: 12 Days of Leftovers So random. |
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Havas [US]: Buzzed Buzzer The noise maker that only works when you're drunk. Comes with instructions to make your own! This did the rounds of the tech blogs so nice work. |
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Mr Kipling & Salvation Army [UK]: Free Christmas Cake Mmmmm cake |
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Strike Bowling | Loud&Clear[AU]: Save Xmas This could have totally fallen down but the delivery is well done. |
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eBay [DE]: Suddenly Xmas Wait a minute no one pushed a button. It's a scam :) |
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Fourground Media [CA]: If Santa was Hipster I'm glad he isn't. Hipster Santa is a douche. |
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HBO | BBDO [US]: DVD Gifts The "Crazy about intercourse" got me. |
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WestJet [US]: Surprise Christmas Flashmob This is the plot for Die Hard 5 right? The flashmob is a cover for terrorist? |
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John Lewis | Adam & Eve DDB [UK]: Mister Imagine's Toy Store John Lewis does it again with another tear tugging video of pure class. Behind the scenes interview here. |
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BMW | DraftFCB [CH]: Fastest Christmas Song in the World The follow up to last year's fastest Christmas card is even better (music is better too). See the site for behind the scenes. |
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TBWA [VN]: SnowMe App I can't find the actual app mentioned!? |
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Spark Brand [US]: The Holiday Gift So hot |
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Sparkfun [US]: Holiday Gift Guide I thought this was an agency until I went to the site. Ginger Lumberjack Hipster stole the show. |
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Office Max [US]: Elfyourself Mobile It's back in mobile form. |
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Wing Advertising [US]: Happy YOLOdays! You can download the template here on the official site |
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GSDM [US]: Frosty's Holiday Sweater Soiree Help choose Frosty's Holiday Sweater. That is one cool snowman BTW. |
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Planit [US]: Holidares Vote on what evil things the staff at Planit should do for being naughty this year. |
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Traction [US]: Apocalymas A advent calendar with a Mayan feeling. |
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Cutwater [US]: Kissmas Party The safest way to kiss your office crush. |
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Hart [US]: Apocalymas The old worst holiday gift trick but this time crowd sourced |
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LOWE ROCHE [CA]: The Intern Holiday Bonus I hope the interns pay tax on their gift! |
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Under.me [US]: Bar Refaeli New Xmas Clip Mmmmm underwear... |
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Klick Health [US]: Know Your Memes Mmmmm memes... |
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Victoria Secret [US]: Deck the Halls Mmmmm underwear..... models... |
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Marcus Thomas [US]: Noggin Cam The shortest straw in all of agency town goes to these guys. See the team get dunked in eggnog. View archive site here with a full ustream video. |
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Sprint [US]: Holiday Medley! - Victoria Justice & Max Schneider I assumed these guys were Glee cast or something similar but they are Youtube stars so I feel slightly less annoyed. I still wanted to punch something after watching this. Watch the behind the scenes for more cheesy goodness. |
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Skittles | BBDO [CA]: Create The Rainbow YOUR NAME THE RAINBOW! |
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Fullsix [ES]: Touch My Food Xmas Tune | Gran Toccata Típica sin Tópicos para Mmmmmm buena comida sabor! |
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Philosophy Communication [US]: You've Been Good Mmmmm chocolate and socks |
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Boa technology [US]: Snow Cheer That's one rad Santa and a really interesting piece of footwear technology. |
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Cactus [US]: Cactus Beard A total of $73 donated so far. Sad face with a beard. |
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Mercedes AMG [US]: Cookies This is how the 1% bake cookies. Tastes like dolphin. |
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Sapient [US]: SapientNitro Social Media Engineered Christmas Bauble of Friendship You can read the press release here. It'd be nice to see these with the map. And while I'm making requests I'd prefer an edible cookie than a tree bauble too. |
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The Mill [UK]: The Wish Machine Every tweet is is written on paper then added to the window display. And 10p is donated to charity. 377 tweets so far though so I hope The Mill donated more than $37 quid. |
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DraftFCB [CA]: Our Gift From You A giant greeting card signed by a robot arm with a Sharpie (their client... nice work). Sadly the ability to sign is finished but you can see the final result on the site and hopefully they have a video to show it in action. |
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Turnbull Ripley[UK]: Christmas Jingles Mmmmmm bells... |
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Google [US]: Santa Tracker Sadly the cute site is now on hiatus until next year. Which is a shame as the site housed some fun little games and activities. Even without the tracking it seems a shame to hide it. Although it seems Microsoft and NORAD took a lot of wind out of Google's sails this year. |
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Rolf Holleis [US]: 3D Printed Cookies Now we're talking. Yum! More details here and here |
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Limbic Media [CA]: Wintertree The city commissioned Limbic to create audio reactive cherry tree in the middle of the city as part of the Holiday festival. More info here. |
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Dennis Adams [US]: Twitter powered LED Holiday Wreath This is what a video looks like without the agency jazz added to it. No hip soundtrack, no cross fade or depth of field shots. Just the guy explaining what is going on. Read the breakdown on how it was made here so your agency can do it even better/bigger in 2013. |
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Voltage [US]: Fruitcake Font A free font for Christmas! |
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Oi [ES]: Santa Hotline Payphone Sooooo cute. |
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KOA | LRXD [US]: Instacamp For when you need to feel like you're by a camp fire. |
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Crush [CA]: Toronto Christmas Classics Bad Santa :) |
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Switch [US]: Ugly Sweaters This is the 3rd Gangnam style ugly sweater this year but on the best looking model so it balances out OK. |
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Mekanism [US]: Mekanistas Needed more cowbell lasers. |
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Team One [US]: Technolidays RoboCarol It kicks into gear after 45 seconds so give it the time needed. |
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Superheroes | Diesel [NL]: Get it While you Can Close enough to Xmas to make it in and worth the 2 minutes of your time. |
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Superheroes | Diesel [NL]: Magic of Christmas Diesel hypnotised people into thinking they were 5 years old ten filmed the results. It has your weekly intake of good looking people viewing. |
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Pure Brand [US]: Dogstagram Tag your dog photos with #christmasdog to help charity. |
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Jamie Kripke [US]: Lots of Trees It's a $1B business in the USA alone and Jamie has documented a few of the lots where they are sold. Make sure to also check out his series on the Freemasons. Quite intriguing. |
| NBA [US]: Dribble of the Bells Nicely done. Check out the behind the scenes. Also dear NBA. Tag your Youtube videos better this was very hard to find via search. |
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The Piano Guys [US]: Upside Down Playing Not only is there a channel on Youtube about 5 guys who play the piano it has 200,000,000 views and a million subscribers. |
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Deepblue [DE]: Christmas Tunes You'll need your smart phone for this one also. Luckily there's a video for those that are lazy like me. |
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Marmite [UK]: Love it or hate It People can upload their photo from a facebook app or visit the bus shelter outside Oxford St mall and upload their photo and whether they love or hate Marmite Gold. Their faces are then displayed on the streets Christmas lights proudly displaying their choice. I love that Marmite is proud to announce people hate their product as it is decisive. |
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JMW | Coca-Cola [SE]: Sing for Me Vending Machine Each vending machine comes with a model release form and a camera crew. |
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JWT | Jamin [NL]: ChocoTweets Warning for Dutch tourists: DO NOT dress as Sinterklaas if you live anywhere else other than the Netherlands. Even Chocotweets sounds racist. It does sound pretty cool to say SINTERKLAAS!!! Oh the campaign... The best choco tweets will be turned into real chocolate and hand delivered by a guy in blackface. |
| Lytro [US]: The Lytro-izer I don't think I have ever wanted to participate in a promotion more than this. I want to be recreated by Screen Novelties! I also want a Lytro now too. |
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Made Movement | Deep Local [US]: thecommunitree I have no idea how this worked but the site is still semi live and knowing Deep Local it involved robots that do cool things. Also they raised $21k which seemed to be the highest this year. Here's a time lapse of what went on day 1. Yep I'm still confused. |
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Stella Artois [US]: Holiday Alice Eve Carole Alice will drive to your house and deliver a sexy Christmas Carol. A lot of work went into this one. |
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Reddit [US]: Secret Santa The biggest secret Santa went down on Reddit this year with 58,000+ people spending almost $2 million dollars. View Press release here. View the gifts here. |
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Mullen | Hungryman [US]: 12 Days of Relief The classic carol sung by those affected by Hurricane Sandy about what they need to fix some of the damage. Four cans of paint is fine but 5 million hugs! |
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BMF | Aldi [AU]: Surfing Santas Finally a surfing Santa (well many) back on the list. Thanks Aldi. The Inspiration Room has a full breakdown of the Aldi campaign which encompassed every piece of media you can think of. |
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Viget [US]: Jinglebots I'm guessing this involved dancing robots but the agency is getting back to me on that. Another creation from Viget's side business Pointless Corp which has done some interesting things. |
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Boussias Communications [GR]: RED & YELLOW XMAS Red and Yellow rather than red and green? Those whacky Greeks!. |
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IRIS Nation [US]: Happy Facetivus HappyBukkakivus.com was already taken? |
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GHO [AU]: Chalk Wall The GHO staff draw some big balls for Xmas. This is the tasteful way to integrate your staff into an Xmas video. |
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Waste Creative[UK]: Jinglebots The ultimate Xmas Party for you to enjoy in eye-popping, mind-blowing Stage 3D AWESOMENESS! It's a veritable sound and light spectacular! |
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Studio Hang Loose [IT]: Interactive Tree Every Xmas tree should be sold with scalextrix cars attached. |
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Zaraguza Digital [SK]: Partyanalyzer This told me I looked 45! If only I lived a drug and alcohol fueled life to warrant that. (sadface-emoticon.gif) |
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Animation Domination [US]: Charlie I couldn't get the "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie..." out of my head all day. |
| Various links found (read: stolen) from CR Blog, CampaignBrief, AgencySpy, PSFK, Denveregotist, Ad Age, Adverblog and Digital Buzz Blog. | Achievement Unlocked: Scrolled all the Way |
Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 6:04 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
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