The decorations are down. Your tree sits forlornly on the curb. A credit card statement has arrived and, like a financial ghost of Christmas past, it haunts you with evidence of inappropriate seasonal generosity. Holiday festivities have been replaced with hangovers and thoughts of impending tax preparation.
Christmas is over.
And that’s a tragedy. Not because I’m sentimental about the holidays, but because advertising now gets significantly worse.
From mid-November through December, advertisers remember everything they learned in business school about effectiveness. When January arrives, they forget every shred and return to the crappy, sub-effective mediocrity that dominates the rest of the marketing year.
This holiday season, the nation’s biggest advertisers discovered emotion. In Apple’s holiday spot, woodland critter puppets make a music video with an iPhone they discover in the forest. Dunkin’ sends a munchkin on a journey of belonging. Disney brings a girl’s mouthless doodle to colorful life and gives him a voice.
The holidays brought on a miraculous moment of mass marketing. During December, Walmart didn’t try to micro-target left-handed millennials who enjoy artisanal cheese on Tuesdays. Coca-Cola aimed at everyone with a pulse and familiarity with Santa Claus. Ford targeted America, not “high-value segments with demonstrated purchase intent.”
These brands understood what effectiveness Godfathers Les Binet and Peter Field have said for a decade: emotional advertising produces twice the profit of rational messaging. During Christmas, marketers believe. By January, they’re back to product features, price promotions, and the overly serious business of under-selling brand promise.
Byron Sharp has shown conclusively that brands grow by reaching all category buyers, not by obsessing over “loyalists” or micro-segments. Personalization is the most over-used piece of marketing jargon of all time.
At Christmas, advertisers get that excess share of voice is the most important and most misunderstood variable in advertising—and they spend proper money to achieve it. According to various estimates, U.S. brands spent over $30 billion on holiday advertising, with the understanding that spending above their market share drives growth.
