Christmas is a magical time when we want to please our loved ones and ourselves. Consumers are more inclined to interact with brand content, especially when it inspires them to buy gifts.

For companies, Christmas represents an average of 20% of sales. It is therefore crucial to create distinctive Christmas marketing campaigns to capture audience’s attention and boost their sales.

In this article, we’ll be sharing ideas for interactive formats and games to help you achieve your objectives and energize your Christmas marketing campaign.

SUMMARY

• Anticipate the festive season to optimise your campaigns
• 5 trends to boost your Christmas marketing campaign
• 3 ideas for Christmas marketing campaigns to stand out from the crowd

E-commerce is booming. At Christmas time 75% of French people buy their gifts on the Internet.

They are inclined to spend online and to plan their purchases so as to spread them over several months. They also want to take advantage of the promotional periods that precede this time (such as Black Friday).

For brands, this means anticipating marketing campaigns as far as possible. They can multiply the points of contact with their audiences, and the opportunites to make purchases on the website (or in-store).

The highlights leading up to Christmas (Halloween, Black Friday, etc.) are opportunities for collecting leads. Companies will be able to activate them by creating marketing campaigns that are effective in converting prospects.

Speaking out in advance allows you to position before everyone else. Brands can boost their visibility and reduce their media budget by communicating when competition is less intense and consumers are less affected by ‘advertising fatigue’.

To create a Christmas campaign, it’s important to take account of your audience’s expectations, and market trends. Whether linked to advertising, marketing or new habits, these trends will enable companies to engage consumers during the festive season.

These include :

• Made in France. 1 consumer in 2 would prefer local products, Made In France, for Christmas presents. Brands can capitalise on this trend to offer competition prizes that are in line with their customers’ values;
• The end of third-party cookies and proprietary data collection. Brands need to focus on implementing zero-party data collection and opt-in tools to maintain contact and refine their customer knowledge.
• Influence marketing remains a powerful lever for engagement. Consumers are sensitive to partnerships between brands and content creators. These campaigns are effective to generate new conversions.
• Short content is recommended to effectively captivate your audience. Companies need to take account of consumers’ attention spans and offer animations that will encourage users to stop scrolling.
• Native advertising (i.e. that respects the format and codes of the channel on which it is broadcast) is crucial to optimise your presence. It makes for a smoother, more immersive experience.

By capitalising on these trends to capture consumers’ attention, brands can create Christmas marketing campaigns, targeting their objectives.

To inspire them, here are 3 ideas for animations and interactive campaigns to engage and convert your audience.

An engaging speed game to boost brand awareness

Gamification (i.e. incorporating playful elements into sales promotions) is a way for brands to capture and hold consumers attention. One of the most effective formats is an engaging mechanic like Tiny Wings.

This speed game was used by household appliance brand Electrolux for its ‘A Swedish Christmas’ campaign. The aim was to highlight the company’s Swedish origins through a fun, viral game, and thus raise its profile over the festive period.

The addictive nature of the marketing game enabled to capitalise on the interaction to collect opt-ins. With an engagement rate of 92% and sessions lasting 1 minute and 18 seconds. This activity helped to strengthen the brand’s appeal to consumers over the period.

SFR Réunion also relied on this mechanism for its Christmas campaign. Focused on lead generation, this was a great success during the recruitment, thanks to a media strategy based on native advertising.

Thanks to an attractive prize fund, the company was able to attract more than 10k new visitors. And with more than 7 games played per subscriber and a playing time of over 3 minutes, this activity generated support for the brand.

2. Instant win for Christmas coupons

Instant winners are also effective during the Christmas period, when users are looking for deals and discounts to save on their purchases.

The 100% winning Claw machine, enables companies to distribute coupons to participants. Showroomprivé.com banked on this Christmas game during the festive season. 7,000 vouchers were distributed, helping to convert prospects and boosting the brand’s sales.

This animation is part of a drive to store campaign during the Christmas period. McDonald’s franchisees in the North of France have chosen to set up a campaign combining a Flappy and a 100% winning claw machine. These events enabled users to win discount vouchers to be used to purchase a Maxi Best Of menu in participating restaurants. This was a way of boosting traffic in the brand’s points of sale.

3. An omnichannel Christmas campaign to engage consumers

It takes an average of 8 interactions between a brand and its prospect before they are ready to buy. If brands want to to boost their Christmas sales, they need to multiply the incentives to buy with their audience.

This is what brands can do by implementing an omnichannel Christmas campaign. Companies will deploy a marketing game (such as the Shopping List ) across their communication channels. Adictiz’s customisable form can be used in interactive formats across 4 distinct channels: the e-commerce site, blog articles, live shopping sessions and native advertising.

Brands will be able to engage their audience across their channels, multiplying interactions to convert prospects and boost their Christmas sales.

Conclusion

To create a Christmas marketing campaign, your brand can rely on engaging game mechanics that will capture consumers’ attention. Create differentiating experiences to boost your brand awareness, collect leads and generate conversions during the festive season thanks to our interactive marketing activities!

Culture is a crucial sector in France, it helps to preserve our historical heritage and put the country on the international map. But it is a sector that has suffered from the pandemic.

To revitalise cultural sites and experiences, and improve visitors’ experience of them, marketing gamification is a lever to explore. Integrating game mechanisms into areas such as leisure, culture and tourism makes the experience fun, interactive and memorable.

Thanks to interactive marketing experiences, visitors to a cultural venue are no longer passive spectators. They are immersed in the history of a venue or behind the scenes of a cultural movement. They are captivated by the world they are discovering, and are likely to retain the knowledge that is being imparted.

In this article, we’re going to look at the ways in which gamification can be a solution to facilitate the discovery of a heritage site or museum. We’ll explain how you can use gamification to stand out from the crowd and improve the customer experience at your venue or cultural event.

Gamification, i.e. the integration of game mechanisms into an experience is not a new phenomenon. It is already used in marketing, in education and vocational training.

This is a widespread approach in cultural institutions. Which offer their visitors the chance to rediscover a place or a piece of history through gamified experiences (challenges, competitions, treasure hunts or riddles).

The aim is to use these entertaining mechanics for more than fun. There, the aim is to educate visitors, enhance cultural heritage and improve the customer experience by making the visit attractive (for younger visitors or those waiting in line).

As we have seen in the marketing sector, gamification is an interesting tool to deploy at every stage of the customer experience. It’s a great way of capturing their attention. To boost their engagement by multiplying the opportunities to interact with the brand.

Interactivity can be a strategy before and after the visit. It can be used to prepare for the visit (by arousing desire or sharing relevant information in a fun way that the visitor will need afterwards). Once the experience is over, gamification becomes a loyalty-building lever, using the data collected to propose similar/complementary offers.

In a nutshell, gamification is a way of improving the customer experience in the culture by:

• Creating a real buzz around an experience or event (particularly online)
• Making a museum visit more fun and memorable;
• Enabling consumers to reappropriate cultural content;
• Multiplying interactions between visitors themselves to federate committed communities around a cultural institution.

Whether it’s an interactive game, a treasure hunt, an augmented reality digital tour or a photo competition, culture and leisure operators have no shortage of ways to gamify and therefore improve their customer experience.

Here are 4 use cases to inspire you.

Wait marketing before a visit or cultural event

Wait marketing is based on the use of digital tools to animate an audience before the launch of a new product or in the queue at a cultural event. It is a lever used in certain sectors where consumers have to wait (in the medical world), but also in events.

The aim is to optimise the user experience before it begins and to make the most of customers’ waiting time. This time can be used to display information prior to a visit; but above all, wait marketing can transform this moment into a pleasant and entertaining one.

Before the visit begins the cultural institution can  broadcast a quiz. It’s a way to keep visitors waiting while testing their knowledge and skills by teasing out what would happen next.

For the Paris-Roubaix race, the Haut de France region set up an Outrun game to immerse participants in the heart of the sporting event. The campaign engaged the public and recruited qualified leads by means of an entry form for a competition to win attractive prizes (goodies, etc.)

Geocaching: turning a walk into a treasure hunt

Geocaching is a practice that combines the principle of treasure hunting with new technologies. It offers a unique and entertaining way to explore a territory or cultural site.

Using a smartphone and a series of clues, participants are tasked with finding ‘geocaches’ hidden along a footpath, in a neighbourhood or even in a town. This interactive game is a highly effective way of enhance the value of your location, reveal little-known or forgotten sites, and improve the customer experience.

In the tourism sector, geocaching allows travellers to collect points for the monuments they visit, or for sites observed. The more points they have, the more rewards they can receive to encourage them to return or share their experience with friends and family.

Interactive tours to attract young visitors to the museum

Interactive or augmented tours can be experienced both physically and online. In addition to a guide, visitors interact with a digital device (a smartphone or tablet for example) through which they can take part in a game.

The Royal Museum of Mariemont in Belgium, for example, has set up a tablet video game called ‘The Ferryman’. Aimed at the very young , this interactive game showcased the museum’s Egyptian collection. Children had to find hidden objects, solve riddles and complete levels. This fun format was ideal for introducing them to Egyptian mythology in a more immersive and entertaining way.

Outside museums, digital walks also combine education and fun. Mobile applications can, for example, enable visitors to take part in quizzes to find out all they need to know. The use of QR codes will also make it easier to display these interactive animations in key places. It’s an excellent way to visit without getting bored, but also to remember important information more easily.

Conclusion

Gamification and expectation marketing are two powerful levers for improving the customer experience in the culture and leisure sector. They enable you to engage your audience at every stage, from discovery to loyalty. To make your cultural venue more attractive, don’t hesitate to use our interactive game mechanics!

Seasonality is a challenge for brands, whatever their sector of activity. They have to adjust their marketing strategy to take account of the needs of their audience at different times of the year.

But the summer period presents an additional difficulty: a drop in consumer attention and purchase intentions in verticals that are not linked to tourism/leisure.

To keep customers engaged over the summer, it’s crucial to understand consumer expectations. It means offering them engaging and well-targeted brand experiences.

In this article, we explain how the summer competitions can help overcome the challenges of the summer period. We share examples to inspire your future campaigns.

SUMMARY

• The main challenges of summer marketing campaigns
• 3 good reasons to organise summer competitions

Summer is a challenging time for brands. Many of them see their sales fall drastically or have to manage a peak in activity. Here are the challenges they face during the summer months.

1. Attract the attention of less available consumers

Companies experience a slack period during the summer season due to a decrease in consumer attention. They are less available (due to holidays, travel, etc.), which has an impact on their interactions with brands, particularly on social networks.

During the summer months, engagement rates can drop drastically. A study by HubSpot shows that this drop can be as 30% during the summer holidays. It is essential for retailers to adapt their marketing campaigns by offering content that is visual, less intrusive and fun.

2. Follow your customers on their summer travels

In summer, consumers tend to be nomadic, particularly when on holiday and travelling to tourist areas. For brands, the challenge is to remain available, online or by simplifying the delivery of their products to holiday destinations.

For some sectors, which have a good physical presence throughout the country, the challenge will be to make these outlets visible. This is the case in supermarkets, by offering geolocated promotions. Sports clubs can offer summer passes to encourage users to visit the establishment closest to their destination, or by integrating digital services (an online sports application).

3. Meeting different needs during the summer holidays

One of the greatest challenges of seasonal marketing is to understand and anticipate changes in behaviour at different times of the year. Shoppers will be inclined to spend on leisure activities in summer and inclined to buy products in winter.

The products and services offered by retailers must be adapted to meet these needs. To take the example of supermarkets, brands need to take account of the fact that their customers are turning to fresh products that are easy to eat on the move (ready-to-go).

4. The impact of seasonality on stock management

The challenges of summer marketing campaigns are not limited to companies whose sales are falling. Sectors that experience peaks in activity can also be hit hard if they are not prepared to meet customer demand.

A survey carried out by McKinsey & Company revealed that 70% of retailers observe an overabundance of stock outside seasonal peaks. 40% of them believe that their stock management could be improved to adapt to seasonal cycles.
It is crucial for brands to adapt their stock management strategy in line with the seasons. This will help to avoid overstocking or stock-outs during the high season, both of which have an impact on profitability, image and customer satisfaction.

To meet these marketing challenges and engage their customers over the summer period, brands can capitalise on gamification. This strategy involves introducing fun, interactive formats (such as competitions) into its communication campaigns.

Here are 3 good reasons to adopt Playable marketing this summer and 3 examples to get you going!

1. Boost your communication and grab consumers’ attention

Summer is a time when consumers are on holiday and looking for entertaining content. By organising a competition, brands offer them a fun and engaging experience. They also catch the attention of an audience that is less receptive to traditional messages.

Competitions make it possible to multiply the points of contact boosting the brand’s visibility organically (on social networks).

Example: Showroomprivé’s Summer Trips campaign achieved its visibility objective at the height of the summer season, highlighting Parc Astérix as an attractive partner for generating leads. The results have been impressive, both in terms of participation (177K users in total) and engagement (with over 186K games played and an average session duration of 1min49).

2. Maintain sales during a slower period

Summer can be a slow period for industries. In this context, competitions are a way of stimulating sales. The format be used to promote the summer offer in an original way (by encouraging the creation of user generated content). It’s also a way of encouraging impulse buying by distributing time-limited discount vouchers.

Example : Altarea Cogedim has launched its Summer Test campaign to energise its shopping centres during the summer sales period. This
personality test was designed to generate point-of-sale traffic and stimulate purchases by sharing personalised product recommendations. The campaign also recruited new fans, leads and opt-ins, helping to enrich the customer database and to maximise the impact of the summer highlight.

3. Prepare back-to-school marketing campaigns and collect valuable data

Summer competitions can be used to gather valuable information about customers (product preference, consumption habits, budget, etc.) This data is obtained via the game mechanics themselves (with a Swiper) or using a form (at the start of game or at the end of the experience to unlock the reward).

This data is used to prepare and optimise back-to-school campaigns and communications throughout the year. Using the information collected, the brand can segment its audience and deliver impactful retargeting campaigns (thanks to personalised content).

Example: The Tape à l’Oeil brand has opted for a summer competition to strengthen its relationship with its customers. The choice of a fun game mechanic such as the Piñata not only boosted the brand’s visibility during the summer period. But gamification also made it possible to collect data and attract qualified leads (thanks to an opt-in form) which the company could then retarget through an e-mailing campaign.

Conclusion

Competitions are relevant in summer to keep your customers engaged, boost your sales and optimise your campaigns. It’s an ideal format for the summer period, making your communication dynamic and fun. Discover our marketing game formats and boost your visibility during the summer holidays!