How to Unwrap Creative Agility This Holiday Season

Need last-minute holiday creative? We've got you covered

The holiday season has a funny way of sneaking up on you. Before you know it, the key sales dates of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas are no longer just some dates far off in the distance. They’re right around the corner and it’s time to spring into action. 

For marketers, this often leads to a last-minute scramble, a mad rush to get all of their campaign elements ready for launch. Creative tends to be a common cause of roadblocks. This is usually due to slow production processes buckling under the added pressure that the peak period presents. This can create big challenges for marketers. Being stuck waiting on creative, or unable to produce enough creative, puts your holiday campaigns on the back foot. This isn’t what you want, especially with the holidays being such high-stakes. 

With Shuttlerock, you can avoid these roadblocks and head into the holiday season on the front foot, with the agility to produce all of the creative you need, when you need it. 

This article delves into how we can help you achieve this, highlighting two of our agility-enabling solutions: remixing & AI.   

Run fast by remixing

There’s no need to produce holiday creative from scratch when you can remix assets you’ve already got. By the time the holiday season rolls around, you’ll be sitting on a treasure trove of assets that have been produced throughout the year. From product images and key visuals, through to social posts and user-generated content (UGC) – it’s all ripe to be remixed into holiday creative. 

Not only does remixing result in much faster turnaround times, it also helps you extract more value out of the assets you’ve already invested in. This is a wise move when you consider the short shelf life of holiday creative. 

An effective use of remixing can be seen in the Peloton example below. They sent us a selection of images that had been used in previous marketing collateral. Our design team then worked their magic, using animation and motion graphics to transform the imagery into a high-impact video ad promoting Peloton’s Black Friday offers. Fast, simple, effective. 

In the Peloton example, remixing was used to repurpose assets that weren’t originally made for the holiday season. But remixing can also be used to amplify the holiday season assets that you have at the ready. This enables you to create new variations and optimizations for different placements. For example, you might have a Christmas TVC or campaign key visuals, but you need to build out creative for socials. Remixing can make this happen, and make it happen fast.

You can see this in action with the Starbucks project below. They came to us with a selection of long-form, 16x9 videos that they wanted to remix for Reels. Our design team did their thing, remixing and optimizing the existing videos to work for the Reels placement. Four concepts were delivered, each highlighting a different holiday recipe.  

Another example can be seen in the work we did with BIC. They sent us the Christmas-themed key visuals they had developed for their lighter range. We remixed the images into fun, festive videos, with optimizations created for different placements across Meta, TikTok, and Amazon. 

Leverage generative AI

You can always count on the holiday season to throw you a few curveballs when it comes to your creative. When they happen – and they will happen – generative AI can be your best friend. Whether you need a last-minute voice-over or an image with a festive background, AI tools can swoop in and save the day. 

Case Study: Explore how Clear Start by Dermalogica is using Shuttlerock’s AI tools to produce creative with greater efficiency.

At Shuttlerock, we have developed a number of generative AI tools that come into their own during crunch-time situations such as the holiday season. They enable brands to quickly generate imagery, voice-overs, and music that can then be used within the production of video content. 

What sets our tools apart from other generative AI solutions is the fact that our assets aren’t purely created by AI. Real designers are involved in the process to ensure that each asset adheres to brand guidelines and quality standards. 

Get started with Shuttlerock today

Shuttlerock can help you unwrap creative effectiveness this holiday season, with solutions that unlock agility, scale, and cut-through. You can learn more about these solutions by visiting our 2024 Holiday Hub. For further information and to explore how we can help your brand, please get in touch with one of our crew members.