Insights

‘Tis (already) the season…for holiday ads

By November 21, 2014 November 1st, 2022 No Comments

I love the holidays. Thanksgiving is next week and I’ve already got the Christmas music going in my car. So if advertisers want to get earlier and earlier with their holidays, that’s just music to my ears. This past week I was struck by two ads from retailers who have very different audiences: Tiffany and Kohl’s. Yep, those are very different brands – but both campaigns warrant recognition.

The concept for America’s luxury jewelry brand is so stunning that the catalog execution is what originally got my attention. I’m not surprised by how lovely the catalog was – Tiffany always has pretty books (and I always take a minute to flip through them). This holiday catalog, however, is illustrated with gorgeous 1960s-esque pictures that tell the story of “A Tiffany New York Holiday.” These pictures are so fabulous that I want to frame them and hang them in my home as holiday décor! They capture the romance of a simpler time, hearkening back to Tiffany’s Big Apple heritage. Sprinkle in some holiday magic (along with sparkling silver, gold and diamonds) and…well, yes I can really picture myself in the back of that yellow cab whose trunk is filled with the iconic blue boxes.

Now if a catalog can inspire such feelings, imagine how their powerful their animated commercial is – it brings the book to life and fills this viewer with emotions akin to what I felt watching the animated Christmas specials of my youth. Take 45 seconds to tune out the world and lose yourself in Tiffanyworld:

So how can Kohl’s, a retailer at the other end of the spectrum, compare to this shiny holiday brilliance? The common thread is tradition…with a healthy dose of holiday magic. We see a father and son driving, over-the-river-and-through-the-woods style. The father is trying to talk to his son, telling him that his father brought him to where they’re going, but the words fall on deaf ears: the boy is listening to music with ear buds. Once out of the car, walking through the snowy area, the son sees a reindeer that actually starts flying. He yells out to tell his dad, who is smiling knowingly. 

Where the Tiffany ad makes me feel the way yuletide cartoon specials do, Kohl’s conjures up the emotions that accompany kids’ holiday movies. Even as adults, we still want to believe in the magic. Kohl’s gets that maybe some of us still do – and that we don’t need to be millionaires to do so.

Happy HolidayS3!

~ Denise Blasevick (@AdvertGirl), CEO, The S3 Agency

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