Can there be a more romantic gift forValentine’s Day than a serenade? Probably, not. Looking back at PUMA’s digital card presented back in 2010, Heineken has launched a Facebook app called ‘The Serenade,’ which allows the brand’s fans to create their own personalized song in one of 20 languages (the English songs goes with subs in Russian, Korean, Czech, Thai and others) and send it to their potential partners, inviting them on a date.
holidays
The article is written by Darren Foley, Managing Director at Pearlfisher, London
December. Presents are lit up in every shop window, emblazoned across every advert and in the front of everyone’s mind. Every magazine and editorial page recommends the best Christmas gifts. Over recent years, we have seen the rise of the alternative ‘charity gift’ and, as Present Aid states, «it’s the gift that keeps giving». However, more recently, an extended range of brands have also woken up to an altruistic approach, challenging the traditional charity giving language and aesthetic.
This holiday season, keeping in touch with the loved ones, seeing and talking to them seems to be as important as sharing gifts and cards. But a lot people are out of home these days, so they may be missing out on something essential. Skype is addressing this problem by offering travelers in airports across the U.S. a great opportunity to connect with their family and friends for free. The Internet phone service, which was acquired by Microsoft in May, is now offering a free hour of Internet access to third-party wireless hotspots within the Skype WiFi hotspot area in 50 airports in the U.S., so that travelers could see and hear their loved ones between flights.
Not only new generations can’t imagine existing without social networks but the old chaps like Santa go online to connect to the audience. Santa prefers YouTube and Twitter these days. With help of Telefonica’s O2, Santa has created the hashtag #O2santa so that followers can tweet him a message that they’d like read out, and Santa will create personal short video on YouTube.
Christmas season is the time when most people not only exchange gifts and send greetings, but also drink and say cheers. For some of us the second goes above the first, and here the problems begin. To address this, global brands, both alcohol and beverage ones, launch campaigns to promote moderate drinking. Recently, the soft-drink giant Coca-Cola rolled out the new round of its ‘Designated Driver’ initiative, and HEINEKEN started its new promotion of responsible alcohol consumption by launching a new extension of the ‘Open Your World’ global campaign of its flagship beer, Heineken. Under the new theme ‘Sunrise belongs to moderate drinkers’ unveiled this Christmas season, the brand is spreading the message of moderate drinking primarily on the web, via a range of platforms, including Heineken’s YouTube channel, Facebook fan page, Heineken.com and broadcast.
On the heels of the announcement of Facebook and HEINEKEN’s tie up, the flagship beer of the company revealed two festive applications on its fan page in the biggest social media platform (though, the major deal starts on January 1, 2012). The apps, ‘BeerFriender’ and ‘The Heineken Social Christmas Tree’ help people celebrate the winter holiday in a true social way like never before.
This Christmas Saatchi & Saatchi is giving an alternative kind of gift, which harnesses the creativity within the Network. We have invited musicians and bands working at Saatchi & Saatchi offices around the world, to create original songs for a Holiday album, as our offering to clients and friends globally. In keeping with the Saatchi & Saatchi philosophy of creating not copying culture, we are tapping into the abundance of talent within the Network, that exists outside of our day jobs.
As 2012 quickly approaches, brands are busy creating unique, charming and memorable experiences for their consumers ahead of Christmas. The Hendrick’s Gin brand, which is known for its extravagant ‘Monty Python’ style, is inviting its U.S. fans to get into the unique world of miracles and winter tales by visiting The Hendrick’s Enchanted Forest of Curiosities, which was first introduced last year in NYC and now for the first time has arrived in San Francisco for just three days, December 6-8, in SoMa. The exiting venue, which “took the city by (winter) storm with a snow-filled indoor woodland scene brought to life filled with oddities, bizarre performances, and even a West Coast-rarity of a twinkling firefly or two,” will make the next stop in Brooklyn, New York, on December 13-15, spreading the holiday spirit with its cute oddities.