A Conscious Christmas: The Brands Changing Tack & Giving Back in 2020

Christmas campaign season is already in full swing, but you might’ve noticed a few changes this year.  Even some of the biggest brands, many well-known for their high-production-value, all-out Christmas marketing campaigns, have this year taken a slightly different approach. And it’s hardly surprising. With 2020 presenting so many challenges to individuals, communities and businesses across the nation, the mood of the room has changed - and brands have had to read that. Even putting Covid aside, this trend of brands being more conscious of social issues, presenting themselves in a more transparent and trustworthy light, and giving back by supporting important causes and charities has been an increasingly significant one in the marketing industry for a while now.

So what are some of the best examples of brands changing tack, giving back, and supporting a more conscious Christmas in 2020?

The Body Shop & Channel 4 

This year, ethical cosmetics company The Body Shop has partnered with Channel 4 to launch its first ever Christmas TV campaign titled ‘Unseen Kingdoms’. The campaign shines a light on female homelessness in the UK, very much in keeping with The Body Shop’s key value of fighting to empower women and girls and its charity partnership with End Youth Homelessness. Using spoken-word poetry by artist Rasheeda Page-Muir (showing support for the creative industry too - we love to see it), the campaign tells the stories of young women Jamie and Danni, both of whom experienced homelessness in their late teens. As part of the wider campaign, The Body Shop and Channel 4 featured clips across their social media platforms, while The Body Shop also explores the facts and experiences of youth homelessness and highlights how people can help on their website.

Papa John’s 

In an effort to raise awareness and support for two of the most prevalent issues the UK is currently facing in the wake of the pandemic, hunger and homelessness, Papa John’s have this year launched its ‘Giving more this Christmas' campaign. The advert enlisted help from internal staff to design and create the assets to help keep costs down and direct money that would have typically been used on creative designs and production costs to charities instead. The pizza chain is donating a proportion of these saved creative and marketing budgets to Crisis, a homelessness charity, and the Trussell Trust, a charity aiming to end UK hunger.

Sainsbury’s & the other big supermarkets

This year, Sainsbury’s released a series of home-video-style adverts that show the unique, diverse and very personal family experiences of Christmas in the UK. Each story ends with the line ‘Food is Home. Home is Christmas’ which Sainsbury’s says is “an ode to the power Christmas food has to transport us back to happy memories of moments shared with our families, whether apart or together.” The campaign was released to a mostly overwhelmingly positive reaction, however it soon became clear that there were racist comments and criticism of the advert on social media. In a quick and clear response, the major supermarkets united and took a stand in an initiative the first of its kind. In a deal with Channel 4, supermarket chains Tesco, Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Co-Op, Iceland, M&S and Waitrose & Partners agreed to broadcast their Christmas adverts back to back during one ad break, putting competition aside to show support for a greater cause. 

Sainsbury’s, along with other supermarket chains, has also launched its own initiative, named ‘Brighten a Million Christmases’ this year, which encourages customers to donate food and other essential products or cash in-store and online to help out those in need this festive season. The supermarket has also pledged to match every donation made, doubling every customer’s contribution, with the proceeds going to each individual store’s charity partner. These range from small food banks, soup kitchens, homeless centres and community cafes to larger charities like the Trussell Trust and FareShare.

Boots 

Another health and cosmetics brand giving back with their Christmas marketing campaign this year is Boots with their ‘What the World Needs Now’ initiative. This year, Boots has centred its marketing around acts of kindness and value, recognising that this is what people need most after such a difficult year. Boots will provide £1 million worth of hygiene essentials to some of the millions of people in the UK living in hygiene poverty through grassroots community initiative and charity The Hygiene Bank. In addition to their Christmas campaign, Boots has also shifted the focus of its content towards helping and supporting their customers through the tough times presented by the pandemic. On social media, there has been a greater focus on empowering quotes and relatable content while on its website customers can find blogs such as ‘Practising self-care at Christmas’, ‘How to beat the winter blues’, and ‘Mental health in isolation’.

John Lewis 

Like many businesses this year, John Lewis fell into difficult times during the nationwide lockdowns, forcing it to cut more than 1500 jobs and close down 8 of its department stores. Producing one of its infamously high budget Christmas ads would not only appear distasteful, but suggest that the company was out of touch with the mood and demands of the nation. Inspired by the ‘acts of kindness’ by the British public during the first nationwide lockdown, John Lewis drove its Christmas campaign in the direction of kindness and giving to charity rather than giving gifts, something which is also supported by its charity partners FareShare and Home-Start. John Lewis’ 2020 Christmas advert, titled ‘Give a Little Love’, aims to raise £4 million for these two charities, who support those facing food poverty and provide initiatives to parents in need of support respectively. The advert is also a celebration of different forms of moving art, featuring nine different scenes created by eight different artists, as John Lewis offers support to the creative industries hit particularly hard by the pandemic.

Woodie’s 

Another brand whose Christmas campaign is an ode to the community kindness we’ve all witnessed during the pandemic is Irish DIY store Woodie’s. The advert sees an elderly woman, Mrs Higgins, being greeted by an array of neighbours as she leaves her house via her broken, creaking gate. One day in mid-winter, Mrs Higgins gets home to find that the hinges on her gate have been replaced and her gate fixed by a local teenager across the street in a small but powerful act of kindness. On Twitter, Woodie’s accompanied the video with text reading “If ever there was a Christmas to look out for one another, this is the one” and explained that their advert was highlighting “how a simple act of homemaking becomes a beautiful act of kindness from one neighbour to another.”

What’s been your favourite marketing campaign this festive season? Let us know over on Twitter, Instagram, or via our Social Media Marketing community on Facebook.