What Malta Can Learn From These Amazing Christmas Ad Campaigns
The Maltese people are seasoned Christmas binge-addicts. From the premeditated ġulbiena harvesting, to the wave of dangling Father Christmases that sweep across the country like a disease come late November.
Apart from all the spirit that Christmas in Malta inherently commands, year upon year there’s another big ‘S’ that keeps getting bigger. Shopping.
So have local companies taken advantage of the new-found deepness of the Maltese consumers’ pockets? We’re not convinced.
Here’s some Christmas campaigns that we think Malta could learn from:
1. Trusting Talent
Celebrity brand ambassadors are a tried and tested marketing tool, and songs written by famous stars for brands sometimes feel a little bit cringe. But when Stella Artois and John Legend joined forces to create a Christmas single called Under The Stars, they brought a new level class to this age-old format. We need this kind of emotion to save us from killing each other during Maltese Christmas traffic.
X-factor: for added sparkle the producers got scientists to record actual vibrations of stars and make them into a real audio recording.
2. Food Porn: Christmas Edition
M&S jumped on the food porn trend before it even was a thing. Their food ads are still second to none. Apart from independent bloggers, the retail world is slow to pick up on this luxurious trend here in Malta. #mistake.
X-factor: M&S food ads were turned into a series and quickly became integrated into pop-culture as truly iconic ads.
3. Hilariously Strange
It is so awesome when big brands jump on the weird wagon. This hilarious ad featuring a Christmas-gift-giving intervention by Jeff Goldblum really hits the nail on the head. So many Christmas Maltese scenarios are just waiting to be made fun of.
X factor: they really brought out the gold in Goldblum through various iterations – here’s a fave with a family jigsaw puzzle exchange.
4. The Heart Wrencher
In 2013 an Irish pensioner who had spent ten Christmases alone decided to kick loneliness in the privates when he took out a personal ad for someone to join him for Christmas lunch. After the press caught wind of his ad and published it, he began receiving tonnes of responses from all over the UK and even beyond. Talk about coming together at Christmas.
X Factor: you’ve got to love this guys supreme and moving honesty: “I think there must be quite a few lonely people around and I am on my own, so it would make sense I think if someone came here for Christmas lunch.”
5. Home-run
John Lewis – The Long Wait from Blink on Vimeo.
This ad just does it all. It makes you laugh it (without fail) makes you cry. It makes you decide instantly where you’re getting your gifts from. Genius.