Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Every year, as soon as Halloween is behind us, it seems like the floodgates open. Without warning, there are holiday marketing campaigns everywhere, with countless businesses rushing to cash in on a spending frenzy. There are holiday emails, social media posts, and TV ads — oh, my.
It might seem like holiday marketing is out of control. But some brands do it very, very well.
How? Well, these brands create campaigns that actually delight customers instead of adding to holiday noise. They evoke emotions and promote sharing, sometimes even connecting people with their loved ones, or partnering with a charitable organization.
Great holiday marketing campaigns come in many different shapes and sizes. Check out our favorites below, and use these ideas to fuel your own holiday marketing ideas.
What To Expect This Holiday Season
Before we get into the examples, let’s talk about what this holiday season will bring for marketers.
A June 2021 survey by Google and Boston Consulting Group revealed that this year, online shopping will play an important role in consumers’ buying journeys.
In 2020, there was a sharp shift toward e-commerce due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, in 2021, over 80% of consumers are seeking out in-person shopping experiences.
With this new balance, brands have to create marketing campaigns that cater to the omnichannel shopper – building offline and online touchpoints.
When it comes to social media, Sprout Social estimates that retailers across all business sizes will receive about 18% more messages per month.
To prepare, brands should develop a strategy to account for the increase in communication, such as:

Making FAQs readily available to your followers, whether it’s on your Instagram Highlights, pinned on your TikTok page, in your profile link tree.
Having a system in place for social media managers to field requests and concerns.

The holiday season is also a perfect time to engage your audience through gifts. With Sendoso, you can nurture your audience with custom e-gifts, company swag, handwritten notes, and more. The platform automates prints, delivers, and fulfills orders for you so you can focus on the results.
Another great tool to nurture your customers in the holiday season is Rybbon. The digital rewards management system allows you to automate your rewards program with a user-friendly dashboard, advanced workflows, reporting tools, and more.
Now, let’s get to some examples of great holiday campaigns from recent years.

1. Apple: Make Someone’s Holiday
This commercial gives all the feels.

It starts out in a very relatable way, showing a family traveling during the holiday to visit family.
The magic of the commercial is that throughout their entire journey, the iPad seems to be the one thing helping to maintain the peace.
And just when you think that’s the point of the commercial, it takes a bittersweet turn as the product is used to create a gift for a loved one.
Why it works: Apple often creates feature-heavy commercials, highlighting function over all else. In this ad, they prioritize emotional appeal and use the product as a vehicle to tell the story.
2. Coca-Cola Canada: Give Something Only You Can Give
In a recent holiday commercial, Coca-Cola brings us the story of a dad doing everything possible to deliver his daughter’s letter to Santa.
The dad enjoys a Coke while deciding what to do with the letter. We can sense that he’s not sure whether he’ll get there in time.
We see him sail through a sea, hike through a forest, ride across a desert, and climb a snowy mountain as he searches for Santa. Finally, he gets there, but Santa’s closed for Christmas. Just when we think the situation’s hopeless, Santa saves the day by cruising in on a Coca-Cola-branded truck and taking the dad home.

His little girl’s wish? For him to be home for Christmas. (This ad will definitely make you cry.)
While we’re always tempted to give expensive gifts, the best thing that you can give to your loved ones is your presence and time.
This installment is just one of the latest in the Coca-Cola company’s legendary holiday marketing campaigns — I mean, who doesn’t love the annual debut of the Coke-drinking polar bears?
3. Microsoft: Find Your Joy
The year 2020 was difficult for many of us. We spent more time on Zoom than ever before, and we heavily relied on technology to distract us from the COVID-19 pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t celebrate the holidays and make the most out of it with our loved ones and pets.
Microsoft’s holiday commercial takes a fun spin on this theme. The commercial begins with a puppy named Rufus. Rufus longs to play and approaches each member of the family, but everyone, from the mother to the grandpa, is enjoying a Microsoft product and doesn’t pay attention.

Rufus grabs his best bud, a puppy from next door. Together, they go on an imaginary adventure involving the games and activities their humans had been enjoying. The ad not only showcases Microsoft’s offerings, but reminds us to cherish our loved ones (and to pay attention to our pets!).
4. Macy’s: In Dad’s Shoes
Macy’s campaign offers a new spin on what might be considered an overdone gift: socks.
“In Dad’s Shoes” takes a little girl through a “Freaky Friday”-like adventure, where she finds herself literally walking in her dad’s shoes for a day. Even though we see her as the daughter, everyone else, from neighbors to passerby, greets her as if she’s her dad.

Throughout the ad, she realizes how much work her dad does and how many places he frequents throughout the course of the day. He spends a lot of time walking. That’s how she gets an idea for what she’ll get him: socks. We all know that you can’t get anywhere without a good pair of socks.
We love that Macy’s showcases a simple gift borne out of empathy. This ad tells us that gifting doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or over-the-top.
5. Airbnb: Airbnb Hosts Ring Our Opening Bell
This is a great example of an ad that doesn’t explicitly allude to the holidays, but rather emphasizes the value of community and gratitude.
Airbnb celebrates the season by thanking its four million hosts for opening their homes to strangers all over the world. The video shows various hosts from different countries ringing the bell and opening the door. We go from the United States to Japan, from Kenya to New Zealand, from Brazil to Spain. (We love that each of these countries were listed in their original languages!)

This campaign demonstrates that you don’t need string lights or artificial trees to create an amazing campaign that embodies the holiday spirit. You can uplift your company’s values, celebrate your wins, and appreciate those who’ve played a role in your success.
6. Amazon: The Show Must Go On
If you lived through the 2020 pandemic (which you most likely did if you’re reading this), then you know how much it derailed any and all plans. Being quarantined keeps us from achieving things, it turns out. Unless it requires alone time.
In this ad, Amazon effectively punches us in the gut with the story of a ballerina who was chosen to play the lead in her dance school’s winter show. The girl is thrilled to be chosen, but as the months pass and the pandemic gains traction, the event is canceled. Ballet classes are moved online. The girl’s initial thrill fades, a feeling we can all relate to.

Her little sister remedies the situation by putting together a DIY event next to their apartment building. All of the tenants look down on her as she dances. The event is socially distant, and the girl gets to dance the ballet she’d been practicing for since the beginning of the year.
What we love most is Amazon’s tasteful product placement. Rather than showing everyone ordering all supplies from Amazon, the ad showcases the purchase of a single product: a flashlight. The flashlight is the critical piece that allowed the tenants to watch the show from their balconies.
7. Woodie’s: #WereAllHomemakers
This one made us cry. Woodie’s, an Irish home improvement store, reminds us of what the holidays are about through the story of Mrs. Higgins, an elderly woman who’s beloved in her neighborhood.
Throughout the ad, we see multiple people greet her. Neighbors and passersby are fond of her. Even the rowdy teens who loiter in front of her house love her. She has one problem: the door that leads to her yard is missing a hinge. In the United Kingdom, homes typically have a fence with a gate. Every time she leaves and comes home, she struggles opening and closing that door, as one corner drags across the ground.

 
When Mrs. Higgins comes home on one particularly snowy day, she finds that her door opens smoothly. The picture focuses on the new hinge that had been installed.
Who fixed it? It turns out it was one of the teenagers who loitered in front of her home. With this advertisement, Woodie’s not only subverted expectations but also effectively communicated what’s so wonderful about the holidays.
8. Hinge: See What We’re Thankful For
This holiday season, what are you thankful for? Recently, dating app Hinge sent around an email posing the same question to its members, using the opportunity to talk about its recent rebrand and subsequent growth — something for which Hinge itself has enormous gratitude, according to the email.
The timing for this sort of marketing is impeccable. The holidays are notorious for the sentimentality they invoke among the masses, and the desire to spend them with “someone special.”
Hinge used this email to harness the holiday spirit and redirect attention to an app that helps people find meaningful relationships, instead of, well, shorter-term alternatives.
[Click here to see the full email]
9. Lagavulin: Nick Offerman’s Yule Log
This one is an oldie but a goodie. Actor, writer, and humorist Nick Offerman loves his whisky. He’s sung about it before, and during a previous holiday season, he joined his favorite whisky brand, Lagavulin, to film a 45-minute video of — wait for it — Offerman sitting in a leather chair next to a crackling fire, drinking whisky and looking calmly at the camera. Where do we sign up for that gig?
“This is smart branding on Lagavulin’s part,” Kristina Monllos wrote for AdWeek. “Creating an extended ad that can serve as a conversation starter — should consumers swap the traditional Yule Log video for Offerman’s at parties — will also get everyone talking about the brand.”
Since the video was initially released, a new 10-hour version of it became available. Consider it our gift to you.

10. BarkPost: Yappy Thanksgiving Eve
Holidays are traditionally a time to be spent with family. For many of us, that includes our dogs.
BarkPost is no stranger to marketing campaigns that help “dog ruvers” include their furry friends into day-to-day life. In November, the pet-friendly brand showed how to do that at Thanksgiving, with a clever email that included holiday-themed cartoons and videos, feeding safety tips, and other holiday survival techniques — which, of course, involve your dog.
Plus, check out that adorable call to action at the bottom of the email: “Stop getting cute dogs in your email. Unsubscribe.” I mean, who would want to unsubscribe from that?
11. reMarkable: Keep Your Goals for the New Year
You may not have heard of reMarkable, but no matter: this company is the definition of cool and simple. Their single offering is a tablet that acts as a “digital notebook.” When you jot anything down, the reMarkable tablet automatically turns your writing into typed notes. Pretty cool, huh?
In its New Year email ad, reMarkable embodied the simplicity of its product by creating an equally simple campaign. In the email, they entice you to splurge with a $50 discount. Everyone knows that New Year is a time to make plans, set goals, and get your things in order.
reMarkable presents its product as the way to do that. They want to help you save time, which will help you spend more time with your loved ones and pets in the upcoming year. And who likes transferring notes from a notebook to a tablet?

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12. Kool-Aid: All I Really Want for Christmas feat. Lil John
In a music video-style ad, rapper Lil John quietly sits down to drink a glass of Kool-Aid as the Kool-Aid man smashes through his wall.
At that moment, the bass drops as a festive music video begins, showing Lil John rapping in front of a family Christmas gathering. The video goes on to show Lil John, the Kool-Aid Man, and Santa dancing along with shots of holiday food, presents, and Lil John’s Christmas list.

By launching a full-fledged music video with a prominent rapper, Kool-Aid both entertains prospects and demonstrates how “Kool” their brand is. Along with being humorous and entertaining, this ad also reminds you that you can still drink Kool-Aid during a time of the year where you’re mostly thinking about hot beverages.
13. Resy: Where to Spend New Year’s Eve
Don’t want to cook for New Year’s Eve? We don’t want to, either—mostly because washing dishes is a chore.
That’s what Resy bets on in a recent New Year email campaign. In a short but effective email, the company invites its subscribers to the best places to dine in the San Francisco Bay Area for the New Year. (If you’re not in San Francisco, you have the option to look for local eateries near you, also curated.) Like OpenTable, Resy allows you to make effortless reservations for you and your loved ones.
We love that this simple email keeps the focus on what we can do to celebrate New Year’s Eve. And what better way to do that than through delicious, local food that we don’t have to cook ourselves?

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14. Erste Group Bank: #EdgarsChristmas #believeinlove #believeinchristmas
You might not recognize this company, but you’d definitely recognize their holiday ad from 2018. Remember the cute porcupine who couldn’t get any friends because his spikes were, well, spiky? The short film has more than fifty million views on YouTube and touched millions of people’s hearts on other social media platforms.
Erste Group Bank did it again during their 2020 holiday campaign. This time, they made it just a little bit more clear what they offer: loans that can help you purchase something that may feel out of reach, but that may help bring your family together.

The ad begins with a granddaughter handing her grandfather his hearing aids. Throughout the video, the grandfather seems unhappy. We later find out that it’s because he’s been wanting to play music, but has no way to because he doesn’t own a piano.
The granddaughter purchases a piano for him. In the end, the grandfather gets to play a song he’d written for his mother. The entire family joins in, and they play the song together.
15. Sonos + Spotify: #PlaylistPotluck
One great way to celebrate the holiday season is with an event. And with events typically come music. Spotify is aware of that tradition, which is why it created #PlaylistPotluck.
It started with a partnership with Sonos. The brands got together to turn playlists into something like a potluck in which everyone contributes something to bring the event together (the tagline of the campaign is “One home. One host. Everyone brings a dish.”) Only, instead of contributing food or drink, everyone contributes a tune to a collaborative playlist.
Oh, look. That feature is available with Spotify!

The idea is delightfully interactive. Instead of using traditional invitations, guests RSVP to the potluck by adding songs to the collaborative playlist. And the cherry on top? Both brands also partnered with the PBS series “Mind of a Chef” for a televised holiday special, in which various celebrity chefs will be using the feature for their own meals.
What we love about this campaign is the fact that it incorporates several different elements and media formats to make it cohesive — a speaker system, a music-streaming app, and a televised special. Plus, if you participate, you’re entered for a chance to win your very own dinner party, hosted by a world-renowned chef. Bon appetit — and rock on.
16. Google: Santa Tracker
While Google’s Santa Tracker has been around for a few years now — and we recommend checking out the back story here — its features have evolved over time. Now there are interactive mini-games such as “Santa Selfie,” “Wrap Battle,” and “Build & Bolt.” Additionally, you can watch delightful short films such as “A Day at the Museum,” so you can see what Santa’s day-to-day looks like.
It’s hard to narrow down what makes the Santa Tracker so delightful, but if we had to summarize it, we’d say this — it combines the holiday wonder of a belief in Santa with real-life technology. What a wonderful way to teach kids about the web, while also allowing them to be kids. (Although, we adults certainly appreciate it, too.)
Google even introduced a B2B element of the Santa Tracker by sharing the code with developers and releasing other elements of the tool as open source. Why make all of that information public? To inspire developers to create their “own magical experiences based on all the interesting and exciting components that came together to make Santa Tracker,” writes Google’s Developer Programs Engineer Sam Thorogood.
Up until Christmas Eve each year, visitors can have a peek at the “North Pole,” to see what Santa’s elves are up to as the holiday approaches.

17. Disney: From Our Family to Yours
Culture, history, and holiday cheer come together in this holiday advertisement from Disney. The media giant takes advantage of their long-standing name to take us back to 1940, when a young girl gets her first Mickey Mouse plush toy.
As the video goes on, we see the little girl grow older until she becomes a grandma. She hands down the plush toy to her granddaughter, who doesn’t appreciate it as much as she becomes a young adult.

The granddaughter realizes how much it means to her grandma and restores the toy back to its former glory. We definitely did not cry when the grandma opened her holiday gift and saw her old toy fixed and restored.
We expected something quite touching from Disney, and this one did not disappoint. We especially love how Filipino culture has been showcased to three million viewers and counting.
18. Black Owned Everything: Jingles and Things (with “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey”)
Black Owned Everything, an Instagram curator of Black-owned businesses and brands, creates the perfect gift guide in Jingles and Things.
Done in partnership with Netflix and the musical “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey,” Jingles and Things curates the very best gifts for the holiday season, including items ranging from fragrance to dishware to dolls. There’s truly something for everyone here—and the best part is that we can support Black businesses while completing our holiday shopping.

Zerina Akers, the owner and head curator of Black Owned Everything, introduces us to the shop by explaining that it’s not just a marketplace but an inclusive platform.
There’s nothing more that encapsulates the holiday spirit than inclusivity, community, and belonging, and we love that Jingles and Things uplifts that theme.
19. Heathrow Airport: The Heathrow Bears Return
This adorable holiday commercial from Heathrow Airport shows the journey of two grandparent teddy bears as they decide to pack up, leave their sunny home, and go visit their teddy-bear grandchildren for Christmas.
At the end, you see the bears reunite with their family in London’s Heathrow Airport.

For many, these bears are both nostalgic and relatable. They remind you of the bears you might have played with as a child and the average grandparents.
When you see the teddy bears join their family, you might also remember the happiness you felt when your grandparents came and brought you gifts or hugs during the holidays.
This commercial is a sequel to a similar ad Heathrow Airport launched a year before, titled “Coming Home for Christmas.” This ad follows the bears riding and exiting the plane to meet up with their family at a Heathrow Airport Gate:

This series of commercials has all the great aspects of an ad campaign because it’s relatable, nostalgic, and incredibly heartwarming.
20. Walkers: All Mariah Carey Wants for Christmas
While the holiday season is a time for caring and sharing, Walkers shows musician Mariah Carey doing the exact opposite.
After filming a music video for her famous song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey gets angry with an elf for taking her Walkers chips. To fend him off, she sings a high note which makes him block his ears and let go of the chips.

This is a hilarious commercial because it shows that the only thing you might not want to share on Christmas is Walkers products. It also shows how even stars, like Carey, enjoy the brand.
Go Forth and Be Merry
Out of all the things that we appreciate about these campaigns, there might be one thing we like the most — the fact that they put the fun back into holidays. This season, don’t let the stress get to you. Have a laugh or a cry with these examples, and please, be merry.
From our family to yours, happy holidays.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2015 and was updated in January 2021 for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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After one too many 10-hour shifts selling candles at the Canal Street Market in Manhattan, Stephen Tracy wanted to quit his job at Keap Candles.
But he had a problem: he wasn’t allowed to quit.
Keap Candles was not just his job, but his business. He’d also signed a contract promising he’d show up at the market every day. Just a year prior, Stephen quit his job at Google to co-found the company with a friend. And now things were not going as expected. At all.
It wasn’t until Stephen and his co-founder thought deeply about the “why” behind their business did things start to turn around. Even though Stephen admits he was not in a happy place and wanted to quit, he had just enough optimism left to make some drastic changes that ended up saving both the company and Stephen as a person.
Featuring insights from Buffer’s Small Business, Big Lessons podcast episode two and the accompanying unpublished interview, Stephen shared what it’s like to pause on business operations to find your why – even as your business is failing – and use that knowledge to turn everything around.
Stephen Tracy, Founder of KeapStarting with passion and hitting a wall
Feeling unfulfilled by life working in tech, Stephen and his friend Harry Doull would regularly discuss what they enjoyed outside of work. A surprise came one day as both realized how much they loved candles.
“We would meet for coffee and talk about what we were thinking of doing next, and one day candles came up as a topic of conversation and it was a surprise to find that we both loved candles so much,” said Stephen.
Realizing the passion they both had, the duo decided to launch a candle company despite neither having ever made a candle. Within a few months, the euphoria they felt as new entrepreneurs came to a startling halt.
“Three months after leaving our job, we had spent a lot more money than we anticipated and had already done some pretty drastic things like cashing out our retirement savings,” said Stephen. “And we still didn’t have a candle!”
Financial pressure mounting and a few candles made, Stephen and Harry began saying yes to anything they felt would help them sell candles. Eventually, they signed a contract to open a booth at the Canal Street Market in Manhattan. Without really thinking it through, Stephen said the duo committed to staffing the booth from 10 am to 7 pm, 364 days per year. And they signed a year-long lease.
“We had got ourselves into a situation where we were now not spending our time doing the things we wanted to be doing,” said Stephen. “It felt that we were trapped in a way, that we were now having to show up and work a retail shift.”
Keap Founders Harry (left) and Stephen (right)Finding a why that drives you
While Stephen said there was no official “rock bottom” moment in the company, both he and Harry were beginning to feel like failures. Candles weren’t selling all that well, they felt trapped in the Canal Street Market contract, and both of them were thinking about calling the business a loss and moving on.
Not ready to quit though, something changed in Stephen.
“What really happened was we eventually acknowledged that we were not in a happy place individually or as a business, and that something needed to change, and there was enough hope and optimism left in both of us to realize that there was a way out of this,” said Stephen.
“We managed to carve out what felt like very precious time to just spend time together… talking about what is our purpose?” Stephen continued. “… I remember still feeling a little bit lost in that process, but that was what we felt instinctively that we had to do.”
In the end, Stephen said he and Harry realized they needed to get clear on their bigger picture purpose. Otherwise, he said, “we were just going to keep falling into the same habits of saying yes to things.”
The duo also decided to start working with a business coach – Holly from AskHollyHow – in summer 2019. Stephen said it kind of felt like therapy as Holly told them to think about what they want as humans first, then second as business owners. The first assignment Holly gave them was profound for Stephen: “write down where we hoped our lives would be in five years’ time.”
The activity led to some shocking discoveries for the downtown-Brooklyn based startup, the first and biggest being geography: Harry wanted to move to upstate New York while Stephen wanted to move to Long Island or even back to his home country of Guernsey, near the UK, to be by the ocean. Second was wanting the company to help build spaces for conversation and connection, building new moments in an ever-distracted world. It quickly became clear to Stephen the current way they ran their business wouldn’t help them reach those whys.
“A lot of people’s dream to be an entrepreneur is to have personal freedom, so why would you then want to end up feeling like you’re in a place or spending your time doing things you never wished to do or, or in a place you never wished to be?” said Stephen.
Keap CandlesChanging your business to match your why
Fresh from working with Holly, Stephen and Harry approached their 2020 and 2021 annual planning meetings much more mindfully. Instead of thinking about business goals, they thought about alignment between business growth and personal goals with a goal of a “truly integrated sense of the company being the one that we wish to build.”
One shocking change came from this planning: Keap deleted all of their social media accounts.
“So that for us, just to be clear, meant no more Facebook, no more Instagram, and also no more marketing done through those channels as well,” said Stephen.
As a direct-to-consumer company that advertised on Facebook and Instagram, Stephen said the decision should have been a scary one. However, it wasn’t because they acted in alignment to their deep personal desires.
“We wanted to take a stand and say it doesn’t make sense for a company that’s trying to cultivate a conversation and a space to be about connection, to then be forcing you to check Instagram for our latest posts.”
Removing what Stephen saw as “the disruptiveness and distractedness” of social media from how they run their business turned out to give the duo much more time to focus on sales and marketing methods that felt more authentic to their “whys.”
“We’re writing more stories on our blog,” said Stephen. “We’re sending out more emails every month, and hopefully in the not too distant future, we can start doing more things that actually bring us joy.”
Workshop in progress, Keap It’s not (only) about the money
Looking back two years later, he said that growing a business authentically comes back to two questions: 1) What is the business really about? and 2) Why are you doing it?
For a lot of people, the answer to both questions is “money.” But Stephen and Harry realized they had a deeper “why” for themselves as entrepreneurs. Stephen doesn’t judge folks who build businesses just for the money, though. It’s just that he thinks most people have something deeper within them, whether or not they realize it.
“Running the business with a sense of that ‘why’ at its core, I think, is the way to run a business in a way that brings fulfillment, joy, and happiness,” said Stephen.

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If  I could go out to dinner with any brand, I think I’d have to choose Trader Joe’s.
Now, I know that may sound weird, but stay with me. Nike, as you know, would be too energetic, which would embarrass me — let’s play it cool here, okay, Nike?
Apple, on the other hand, would be both sophisticated and a little pretentious, which would make me nervous.
And Timberland is just too outdoorsy and gritty. We wouldn’t have much in common.
By comparison, Trader Joe’s is unique, earthy, and a little playful. We could discuss its fantastic seasonal selections, like its Pumpkin Alfredo Sauce or Butternut Mac & Cheese Bites, and I would thank TJ (because we’re at the nickname level by now) for its generous cheese prices.
While we all know I can’t actually go out to dinner with Trader Joe’s (or any brand, for that matter), I’m willing to bet you’re able to picture what it would be like to hang out with your own favorite brand — or how a dinner with Peloton might differ from a dinner with Netflix.
That’s the power of brand personality. It helps you relate to certain brands that mirror the characteristics you value most. And it also inspires you to connect with certain brands that demonstrate characteristics you hope to develop.
Here, let’s explore why brand personality matters. Plus, how to create your own brand personality, examples of powerful brand personalities, and tricks of the trade from HubSpot’s Brand Strategy team.

What is brand personality?
Simply put, a brand’s personality is the set of human characteristics you attribute to that brand. Or, put another way — it’s how you’d describe a brand if it were a person.
A brand’s personality shines through in brand messaging, images, and overarching marketing campaigns.
Additionally, consistency is key. If your brand’s personality differs on your company website compared to your social channels, it will be more difficult for consumers to learn who your brand is, and what it stands for.
As Ben Harmanus, EMEA’s Head of Brand Marketing, puts it, “A brand’s personality is a set of human traits that define a brand. These traits set one brand apart from others, and make it unique.” 
Harmanus adds, “These characteristics should be chosen wisely, since they help build an emotional connection to a specific target group.”

Harmanus told me, “Brand personality is the essential foundation for brand identity and brand marketing — and has a huge impact on the sales process.”

To understand how brand personality infiltrates a brand’s marketing materials, let’s take a look at a few examples.
Brand Personality Examples
1. Nike 
Nike’s marketing materials – from its slogan “Just Do It”, to its mission statement “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world — embody excitement, passion, and energy.
You know who Nike as-a-person would be: A passionate sports fan, an avid athlete, and someone who is innovative and forward-focused. Nike as-a-person is interested in the newest and best when it comes to wellness and fitness.
Consider how this plays out in Nike’s marketing strategy. The caption of a recent Nike Instagram post begins, “No more waiting…”

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Nike (@nike)

The images and videos across Nike’s website and social pages are colorful and fast-paced, with Olympic athletes running and Serena Williams swinging a racquet.
And if you watch a Nike ad on TV, you’ll be shown the same personality — someone who is excited, active, and ready-to-go.
2. Chanel 
If you’re looking for a brand personality that exemplifies sophistication, look no further than Chanel.
For starters, take a look at the brand’s mission statement: “To be the Ultimate House of Luxury, defining style and creating desire, now and forever.”

Additionally, let’s consider their Instagram page – the Chanel team uses soft blues, light yellows, and plenty of black space to draw attention to one focal point.
Their minimalist, vintage theme effectively suggests a sophisticated brand personality.
You know who Chanel is — Chanel as-a-person is someone who cares deeply for fashion, is highly polished and never says the wrong thing, and is both refined and worldly.
3. REI 
There aren’t many brands as polar opposite to Chanel as REI, so let’s dive into their personality next.
REI is rugged, outdoorsy, and tough.
Their website’s homepage currently reads, “Celebrate the power in you”, and the About Us page says, “At Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) we believe a life outdoors is a life well-lived! We believe that it’s in the wild, untamed and natural places that we find our best selves, so our purpose is to awaken a lifelong love of the outdoors, for all.”

REI as-a-person is your “Earthy-crunchy” friend who enjoys camping, hiking, swimming — you name it, as long as it takes place outdoors. Because of their love for outdoors, REI is also dedicated and focused on the environment, and solely purchases sustainable products.
4. Volvo 
Volvo as-a-person is reliable, sturdy, and dependable. Volvo prides itself on “their years of leadership in automotive safety”, and is disciplined, responsible, and principled.
Take a look at the following Volvo commercial, which highlights the safety of the cars above all else:

Additionally, if you take a look at Volvo’s About Us page, you’ll read statements like, “For nearly a century we have been making life easier, better and safer with cutting-edge technology”, and “Volvo Cars is a brand for people who care about the world we live in and the people around us” — all of which suggests a personality of dependability.
While other car dealerships might focus on a car’s fancy features, Volvo stays committed to one key value: Safety.

Dimensions of Brand Personality
In The Journal of Marketing Research, Jennifer Aaker outlines five dimensions of brand personality: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.
These five pillars can be jumping-off points when identifying your own brand’s personality.
However, there will be unique personality traits that fall under each broader dimension, and the more specific you can be when identifying which traits belong to your brand, the more authentic and unique your brand’s personality will become.  
Let’s explore some specific personality traits that fall under each dimension, now:
Traits that relate to sincerity:

Wholesomeness
Trustworthiness
Honesty
Authenticity
Cheerfulness

Traits that relate to excitement:

Passion
Adventurousness
Enthusiasm
Boldness
Imagination
Daring

Traits that relate to competence:

Intelligence
Dependability
Success
Principled
Conscientious

Traits that relate to sophistication:

Elegance
Composure
Worldliness
Confidence
Tact

Traits that relate to ruggedness:

Toughness
Athletic
Sturdy
Outdoorsy
Reliable

How to Create a Brand Personality        
Now that we’ve explored some examples and traits of brand personalities, you might be wondering how you can create your own brand personality.
Ultimately, you’ll want to do this as early as possible. A brand personality can help guide your marketing team’s decisions and ensure your entire team remains consistent across channels — and consistency is key for brand recognition and long-term customer loyalty.
Whether you’re creating a personality for the first time or interested in re-vamping your existing brand personality, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to learn the six steps you’ll need to take to create a strong, lasting brand personality.
1. Figure out your values.
Like any real human being, values can shape who your brand is, the decisions your brand makes, and how your brand acts.
So you’ll want to start by outlining your core values. What matters most to your brand? (Hint, hint: It should be whatever matters most to your target audience.)
Once you’ve identified your brand’s values, write them out in a value statement. Your value statement will be the foundation of your brand’s personality.
For instance, consider Life is Good’s mission statement: “To spread the power of optimism.” I’m willing to bet Life is Good’s mission statement helps drive all marketing decisions — for instance, as a marketer for Life is Good, I’d want to ensure my Instagram captions or ad copy were positive and hopeful.
2. Use your audience as inspiration — since they already are who your brand should be.
REI’s brand personality works because its target market is an audience of outdoors enthusiasts. The brand’s personality would be entirely ineffective, on the other hand, if the brand was targeting office employees.
This is why it’s vital you consider, first and foremost, your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and expectations.
You’ll want to conduct qualitative and quantitative research on your target audience to ensure you have a strong understanding of your buyer persona. 
To begin understanding your buyer persona, you’ll want to ask questions like these:

Does my audience care more about luxury, or affordability?
Are they driven by emotions, or logic?
When purchasing products, what matters most to them? Sustainability? Safety? Entertainment?
What does my audience do in their free time?
What do they care about?
What do they like? What do they dislike?

The deeper you understand your audience, the easier it will be to construct your brand’s personality. Your brand should reflect and reinforce who your buyer persona is — or who they want to be.
Chanel’s brand personality, for instance, resonates so strongly with its audience because it reflects traits that matter to its audience, including luxury and sophistication. If Chanel was targeting an audience that cared more about affordability, then it wouldn’t succeed.
3. Ask yourself questions as if your brand were a human.
Once you’ve constructed a loose outline for your brand’s personality, you can refine it by asking yourself (and your team) questions as if your brand already were a person.
This might sound silly, but consider asking yourself:

How does my brand act when they go to a party?
What does my brand talk to its friends about?
What excites my brand? What scares my brand?
Why does my brand behave X way? What drives it?

It’s critical you’re able to describe, in great detail, who your brand is. This information doesn’t have to be public-facing — in fact, it most likely won’t be. Instead, this information will be used on the back-end so your marketing team can create materials that resonate with your audience and begin building strong brand loyalty. If done effectively, your audience will begin connecting to your brand without realizing why they feel as emotionally compelled as they do.
4. Create a brand style guide for your team.
Over time, your team will change. New people will join, others will leave. If you don’t have strong guardrails that outline who your brand is … and who it isn’t … you risk diluting the brand personality over time.
To combat this, ensure you create a brand style guide that outlines how the brand personality will display itself through your marketing materials. For instance, what font demonstrates your brand’s personality? What about colors? Language, voice, tone? Visuals?
The more specific you can be with your brand style guide, the more likely you are to see consistency across channels. Additionally, you’ll want to take the time to outline who your brand isn’t. These guardrails will ensure your brand doesn’t sound and act different on your social channels compared to your website.
As HubSpot’s Global Head of Brand Marketing Amy Marino puts it, “A brand personality can inform everything from how you write marketing copy to how you design your website to where your brand shows up in real life.”
Marino adds, “Developing a brand personality is an important element that can guide your company’s brand marketing … and ensure prospects and customers feel elements of continuity across every brand interaction.”

5. Iterate.
Over time, as you conduct market research, you’ll want to remain open to iterating on your personality if it no longer serves your audience or meets your audience’s needs.
For instance, perhaps in market research you find audiences feel your brand is a little too aggressive. To fix this, you might soften your brand’s personality and use more calming language across your channels.
With these tips in-mind, you’re now well on your way to developing a strong, unique brand personality that works best for your brand. 
Ultimately, your brand’s personality has a direct impact on how emotionally invested your consumers are in your business — and how willing they are to stick around for the long-haul. 

In 2022, 51% of B2C marketers plan to increase their marketing budget.
The question is where is that budget going? Will marketers reinvest in the same strategies or try new trends?
From influencer marketing to virtual events, there are so many efforts brands can focus on. Let’s see what our latest research says about what worked well for marketers this year and where they plan to invest in 2022.
To understand what trends B2C marketers are leveraging in 2022, we surveyed 1,067 global marketing professionals working in B2B and B2C companies. Here’s what we found.
1. Short-form video will be a priority.
Short-form video took off in early 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down.
Back then, TikTok was the number one place to go for short-form content. Today, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are also competing for users’ attention.
This is good news for brands, as the short-form video trend content offered the second-highest ROI for B2C marketers in 2021, behind influencer marketing.
Despite coming in second for ROI, it’s the trend marketers plan to invest in the most in 2022. The second surprising fact is that for many marketers, about 32%, 2022 will be their first time leveraging it.
Why now? Well, short-form video is such a key feature in social media today. And according to the data, social media takes the lead in marketing investments for businesses.
That’s likely because, in 2022, there are three key goals brands have running marketing campaigns, according to the study:

Increasing brand awareness (49.3%)
Increasing revenue (43.3%)
Advertising products (42.1%)

With social media, you can accomplish at least two out of three. Brand awareness was always the main benefit of using social media but things have evolved. Today, with so many platforms offering in-app shopping experiences and advanced ad formats, brands can meet more of their marketing goals.
2. Influencer marketing will still be a key lead/revenue driver.
For most B2C marketers, the power of influencers is clear.
In 2022, 61% of B2C marketers surveyed in the study plan to leverage it in 2022. In fact, it’s the third-highest trend they plan to prioritize, behind short-form video content and inbound marketing.
This is because in 2021, it offered the ROI.
What might be different in the future is the type of influencer brands focus on. Historically, brands have focused on the biggest and most popular influencers to partner with.
However, some data suggest that micro-influencers with under 100K followers may be more effective.
While the verdict is still out on that, one thing is clear: Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere.
3. Audio content will take a front seat.
Data suggests that video is the leader when it comes to content marketing. However, audio is slowly creeping up into the mix.
According to the survey, only 19.1% of B2C marketers use podcasts or other audio content in their marketing. Of those who do use it, 37.4% find it to be one of their most effective trends.
Even though adoption was seemingly low in 2021, the data suggests that more B2C marketers will add audio content to their marketing efforts in the new year.
Roughly 43% of B2C marketers plan to increase their investment in podcasts in 2022 while 38.4 plan to keep it the same. Another interesting fun fact is that this particular piece of data is virtually the same for B2B marketers.
This suggests that across all industries, brands recognize the power of audio content.
4. Social responsibility will be more important.
Now more than ever, consumers want and expect brands to be more transparent and take a stand on social media.
In fact, a 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer survey revealed that many consumers see trust as a leading factor in their purchasing decisions.
In the past two years, particularly in the height of the COVID-19 crisis and calls for social justice, consumers have started holding brands more accountable. In 2022, brands will be addressing that demand.
Currently, only a third of B2C marketers surveyed find social responsibility to be an effective marketing trend. Despite that fact, 45% plan to increase their investment in 2022.
5. Brands will continue to apply inbound marketing strategies.
Inbound marketing is all about meeting consumers where they are. Instead of marketing efforts that push messaging out to consumers, this focuses on attracting them toward you.
Behind short-form video, inbound marketing is the top trend marketers will invest in next year.
In fact, over 80% of marketers plan to keep the same budget or add more for this strategy.
This is done by following the “Attract, Delight, Engage” model that leverages content marketing, SEO, marketing automation, social media, and more to nurture consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
There you have it – some of the top trends B2C marketers will invest in 2022. Between publishing regular video/audio content on social media and developing a strong inbound marketing strategy, marketers have a busy year ahead.
To keep up with the latest trends in marketing, download the 2021 HubSpot Not Another State of Marketing report.