Advertisers have reason to be cheerful this holiday season, with consumer spending projected to jump 7% from what was seen in 2023. But as we know, increased spend is one thing; capturing it is another. As sales opportunities peak, so too does competition, with advertising noise dialed all the way up to eleven with every brand vying for the attention of deal-seeking shoppers.
Creative is the catalyst to cut through this noise. Running more immersive, interactive, personalized, and authentic creative, will help you stop shoppers in their scrolls, allowing you to communicate your holiday offerings more effectively and ultimately drive sales.
This article explores five creative strategies that will help you achieve these goals. By following these strategies, your holiday season campaigns will be primed for peak performance. Let’s get to it!
1. Land impact with innovative formats
The holiday season is the perfect time to think outside the box and experiment with innovative formats. Your run-of-the-mill creative isn’t going to win over the hearts and minds of shoppers. Give them something they can get excited about, something that they haven’t seen before, something that jumps out of the screen and pulls them in.
Shuttlerock has a sure-fire solution to help you achieve this: UGC 3D.
Our UGC 3D solution blends the authenticity of UGC with the impact of 3D video. You can see an example of this above in a video we produced for Primark where we combined raw UGC footage from an outdoor mall with 3D models of shopping bags parachuting in from above – now that’s how you land a message!
The holiday applications for this solution are endless. Let your imagination run free, then contact us and we’ll help you make it happen.
2. Immerse shoppers through interactivity
Interactive formats are a great way to engage holiday shoppers as they bring them into the experience as active participants as opposed to passive viewers. This results in audiences spending more time with the ad, which ultimately leads to higher conversion rates.
There are plenty of interactive formats across digital platforms for advertisers to choose from – each with varying degrees of interactive elements. One of these is Meta’s Instant experience format, which you can see in action above. For their Christmas campaign, L’Occitane collaborated with Shuttlerock to create an Instant Experience that immersed shoppers, enabling them to explore different gift options before being directed to a landing page to make purchases.
3. Personalize your messaging
Your holiday messaging is going to be more effective when it’s personalized towards your target audiences. To achieve this personalization, you need to diversify your creative, developing unique treatments that speak to different personas and buyer motivators. Avoid trying to cover all your bases within the same creative concept; it will only result in surface-level engagement. To truly resonate, make personalization a priority.
4. Deliver authenticity with UGC
When you look at holiday spending power, the younger generations reign supreme. In 2024, millennials are projected to pull ahead at the top of the pack, with Gen Z leapfrogging Gen X into second position.
To maximize performance, you’ve gotta cater your comms for millennials and Gen Zers. One of the keys to this is authenticity. These audiences connect more with content that is unpolished, relatable, and platform-native.
This can be achieved by featuring UGC or UGC-style footage within your creative. This helps you to match the look and feel of organic content. You can then package your holiday messaging within native story types such as a get-ready-with-me, try-on, unboxing, or product review.
Learn about Shuttlerock's end-to-end UGC solution that makes it easy to produce authentic content at scale.
5. Speak to the self-gifting mindset
Speaking of millennials and Gen Z, a trend that has picked up in popularity over the past few holiday seasons is self-gifting. 73% of millennials and 68% of Gen Zers state that they are likely to “treat themselves” to gifts during the holiday season.
With these two demographics being the biggest holiday spenders, it makes a lot of sense to speak to this mindset in your creative. This can be done through “gift yourself”/”treat yourself” messaging backed by relevant offerings.
Elevate your holiday season creative with Shuttlerock
Cutting through the holiday season noise comes down to your creative. There’s a whole lot of sales opportunities out there, but if your creative isn’t connecting, your ability to capitalize will be restricted.
At Shuttlerock, our creative solutions can help you elevate your holiday season campaigns, enabling you to produce more immersive, personalized, and authentic creative. Get started now by booking a meeting with one of our sales teams to discuss how we can support your brand.
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