Naked Thoughts: Holiday Ads we Love
Written by the Naked team
The holidays are a time for many things: eating our bodyweight in chocolate, reaching our full potential as leisure professionals, pretending to like all the gifts we get, and, for us at Naked, deciding which holiday campaigns we wished we thought of first.
With brands the world over pulling out all the stops for their holiday spots, it can be near-impossible to cut through the clutter. Yet a select few campaigns manage to maintain their mystique, even after our 83rd viewing while plastered to our parents’ couch.
These are some of those most timeless of holiday campaigns, according to a few of our Nakedites:
LAURA MAHON, DIRECTOR, DIGITAL,
CONTENT + PRODUCTION
Ad: Guinness, 2004 (in Ireland)
A stone-cold holiday classic for me is the Guinness ad created by BBDO back in 2004, which has run every year since exclusively in Ireland, making it the brand’s longest running ad globally in its history.
Seeing this ad is when I always feel the festive spirit truly kick into gear - especially since I usually see it once I’ve arrived back in Dublin and I’m sitting in front of the TV, in a rocking chair in my parents’ sitting room, drinking some Barry’s Tea (another brand with an amazingly emotive holiday spot, which is Ireland’s longest-running radio ad and has been played annually for 25 years! Listen to it here).
Between the locations featured, the cinematography, the music and the whisper at the end, the whole thing is pure perfection. It beautifully encapsulates the still that takes over the country on an eve of the year where everyone is home early, excitedly preparing for the day ahead.
On a year when I can’t get back to soak up all the holiday cheer, I’m not sure anything could make me more homesick while at the same time excited about how this ad will make me feel this time next year, when I’m back in my fair city with family and friends.
You can read more about the story behind this magical ad on the Diageo website here.
TAYLOR PAWSEY, ACCOUNT DIRECTOR
Ad: John Lewis, 2016 (UK)
Every year, John Lewis produces a campaign that tugs at the heartstrings, with a slice of humour alongside, too. There are a lot of great ones to choose from, but my personal favourite is the trampoline advert they released in 2016.
It begins with a typical holiday scene of a parent setting up an elaborate gift for a sleeping child, but then takes a few surprising turns, and at one point even looks like it’ll end in a dramatic standoff. The ending still gets me, and they even manage to wrap it up with a bow of a tagline.
DAN MULLIE, COPYWRITER
Ad: NBA “Jingle Hoops”, 2013
I still have a vivid memory of seeing this ad live on Christmas Day and thinking “This has got it all.” My favourite NBA stars shooting swishes to the notes of Jingle Bells, weird sleeved jerseys that made me dream of being good enough at basketball so that I too could have awkward custom clothing designed for me, and a surprise alley-oop to LeBron James that provided ample yuletide punctuation to an ad I already knew I’d remember for many Christmases to come.
GREG PLATA, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY AND BRAND DEVELOPMENT
Ad: WestJet Christmas Miracle, 2013
My favourite holiday campaign is one I was lucky enough to be a part of: WestJet’s 2013 Christmas Miracle. It wasn’t the first time we did it, but it was the first one that went viral.
We captured a little bit of lightning in a bottle, and got lucky with a lot of things along the way (a video production that relied on a single stunt, with 175 volunteers, coordinating across 3 different cities and time zones, in a live airport during the holidays?!) but it was what we learned from the previous year in terms of focusing on the experience and the way we shared our story, that allowed it to become what it was – a simple act of caring, with an incredibly complex execution.