By this point, you’ve probably spent at least a month getting bombarded with Christmas stuff. From sparkly lights in town centres and Christmas music in shops to festive animations on websites and specials of your favourite shows – there’s no escape!
For some of us, this is a delightful time full of wonder and magic. But for many businesses, Christmas is a cutthroat competition that can make or break your brand.
It’s tempting to try and come out on the right side of Christmas by following the herd and doing what everyone else does. But we think differently. While there’s a lot to be said for keeping a close eye on your competitors, getting too deep into the ‘Christmas Spirit’ can actually be bad for your brand.
Let us explain what we mean by running through what not to do online at Christmas – specifically, with your website during the festive season:
Don’t sacrifice accessibility for Christmas
Decorating is a big part of Christmas. That goes as much for websites as it does for houses. A lot of people look forward to adding some festive touches to their website in December. An animated snowman here, a festive border there. It’s fun!
But a lot of people go overboard with this, and effectively block off their websites for huge numbers of potential customers in the process.
Changing the colours of your website, or adding a snowfall animation to every page, or setting a festive jingle to play whenever someone clicks into your site may seem like great ideas at the time. But they can have big implications for accessibility.
Animations, certain colour-schemes, or wipes that take over the whole screen make it hard for people with visual impairments to actually read your site. They also make your site slower to load and less mobile-friendly. If people have to wait too long for your site to boot up, they’re likely to click out before your content even loads.
And as for sites that play noise when you click into them…they’re just plain irritating. Don’t do it! Think of the poor folk trying to do a bit of surreptitious browsing in work hours. Do you really want to grass them up by blasting Jingle Bells to the whole office? Well, do you?
Don’t change who you are for Christmas
It’s ok to be a bit more Christmassy for the season. In fact, a lot of customers expect it. But if you totally change everything about your branding, tone and ethos for Christmas, you’ll both confuse and disappoint your customers.
Let us tell you a cautionary tale of corporate cash-ins going mad and creating a monstrosity so execrable that George Lucas has tried to destroy all evidence of its existence. We speak, of course, of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special.
If you’ve never heard of the Star Wars Holiday Special, we apologise for ruining your innocence. If you have, we’re sorry for reminding you of it. Basically, it involved the original Star Wars team trying to get to the Wookie home planet for ‘Life Day’ (a thinly disguised version of Christmas). There were song and dance numbers. There were cheap and tacky costumes. There was so little script that they had to fill up an extraordinary amount of time with wookie grunting. It was so bad, so universally hated, so horrifically cringeworthy that Carrie Fisher used to play it at parties when she wanted her guests to leave.
But what really made the Star Wars holiday special so bad? Why do people really hate it so much?
Poor budget? Sure. Weird song’n’dance numbers? Definitely. Bad writing? Yup. Bad acting? Well, the actors were doing the best with what they had…but yes. Chewbacca in a red frock and Mark Hamill in makeup that made him look like a Ken doll? Honestly, those were the best bits.
Don’t have nightmares, kids
All of these things made the Star Wars Holiday Special bad, but they’re also all symptoms of the main, huge, overarching problem: the Holiday Special wasn’t Star Wars. It was a shameless cash grab. Christmas (and its attendant saccharine sentiment and musical numbers) had no place in the Star Wars universe – it was shoehorned in disguised as Wookie ‘Life Day’ so that the franchise could produce a ‘holidays’ feature and sell some extra toys.
There are lessons to be learned from the Star Wars Holiday Special: don’t transform who you are and what you do just to cash in on Christmas. If you suddenly alter your brand tone, appearance, and persona for Christmas, you’ll bomb as hard as the Star Wars Holiday Special did.
Sure, be a bit more Christmassy if you want to. Just make sure that your Christmassy mood is in tune with your overall branding and persona. If you suddenly become completely different to the brand that people know and love, you’ll lose a lot of trust (and make your customers cringe to boot. Nobody wants cringing customers).
Don’t start Christmas at the wrong time
Quick question: what month is Christmas in? It’s the 25th of…?
Judging by some brands, you’d think it was the 25th of November. Or even October. Or even September. If it wasn’t for Halloween bravely standing tall against the Christmas Creep, we’d probably be seeing reindeer and snowmen in the shops in June.
Thank you for your service, Halloween.
OK, yes, we know, it’s important to be prepared for Christmas, and that often means starting your business Christmas season a long way in advance of December. But do you have to actually launch your Christmas campaigns that early? Can’t you keep them on the back burner ready for release closer to the time?
There are legitimate reasons for starting Christmas-themed promotions and campaigns relatively early. People often like to get their Christmas shopping out of the way before December, and it’s good to be ready for that. Or…so you might think.
In fact, a lot of experts think that starting Christmas promotions early can be bad for your business. Not only do a lot of people really, really hate seeing Christmas stuff before December but, as David Katz, Chief Marketing Officer for Levis and Tommy Hilfiger points out, lengthy Christmas promotions destroy the urgency and specialness of the Christmas season.
“If I’m going to have a four month holiday season, I’m not as driven to buy now. You lose the sense of urgency and immediacy”
So should you start your Christmas promotions before December? Yes, probably. But wait until December to ring the jingle bells and roll out the festive branding.