It is important to keep holiday messaging in line with the brand positioning. Ways to make sure the brand doesn’t lose itself in short term festivities include:

1) Stick to your core message.

You want to stay true to who you are. You want to keep the message your customers know, and keep the core values alive. Then just mix things up a bit and have some temporary fun. Cocacola has been about “Taste the Feeling”, and in 2021 December, it added “Real Magic.” That was a continuation of their slogan, and encouraging their audience to taste real magic.

2) Don’t lose your brand essence.

Personality dictates how you interact with your environment, how you react to situations. It’s your basic blueprint for social interaction, and you want to keep that going! If your company is usually fun and upbeat and adventurous, you need to make sure your Christmas or New Year’s communications are just as fun, adventurous and upbeat as they normally are. If your brand is bureaucratic and formal, keep your brand spirit alive! Safaricom has always been keen about giving back to the community, music, one on one interaction with customers using roadshows, and also giving subscribers deals on data, phones and airtime. During the 2021 Christmas holidays they had a month long promotion in keeping with what they always do, called “Pokea uteo wa furaha” – (receive the tray of happiness). The tagline that has been running since 2020 is “For You.” This ties in perfectly with their brand personality and the 2021 Christmas holidays promotion.

3) Keep your design, visual language and colors recognizable and in line with your brand

Colour accounts for about 80% of your brand recognition, so carefully make sure that your core colours stay with you throughout your seasonal advertising. Around Christmas, not everything suddenly has to turn silver, white, red and green. You can absolutely keep to your own colours. The symbolism of these holidays is so strong that you can do an interpretation of those visuals in your own colours, and put your own spin on things. We have examples of betting companies, which though spreading the holiday cheer, will still stick to their colors making them easily recognizable.

4) Take advantage of holiday advertising to give deals on products you want to push.

This is usually seen with phone and electronics companies where they have a gadget being released to coincide with Christmas, Easter, Valentines, Ramadhan, Diwali etc. People tend to spend more when keeping up with the “holiday spirit” and brands have taken note of this.

We at Brand Integrated Consulting (BI) are available to guide you as you develop your 2023 / 2024 CSR strategy. You can reach us on info@brandintegrated.com.

The author is a Partner Consultant in the Strategy Division at BI. You can reach her on joyce.waithira@brandintegrated.com

Staying on brand when doing seasonal / holiday advertising is all about keeping the established symbolism that is associated with that particular event, but doing it in your own unique and recognizable style.

Happy Holidays!