Copywriter, content marketer and ghostwriter
Copywriter, content marketer and ghostwriter
If you’ve worked in B2B marketing for a year or more, you’ll know that it’s well past time to be thinking about the Christmas article.
I’m already working on my first Christmas article of the year for a client, and over the years I’ve been privileged to create various pieces of Christmas content. If you’re trying to create your Christmas content and finding it difficult, this blog is for you.
Christmas content can feel corny – if done badly. And there are some scrooges in the world of B2B (especially in the tech space) who feel it’s frivolous and not on brand for them to do something festive.
To them I say: bore off. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of Christmas!
As you’ll see in this blog, part of the problem is that people assume ‘writing a Christmas article’ means slapping together some awful puns about snow and finding some references to Father Christmas. Those sorts of things won’t be on brand for everyone. But that’s not the only way to write a Christmas article.
Done right, a piece of Christmas content is a great way to get a bit of that mindshare we’re all after, just by wishing your customers, partners, and prospects a happy holiday season.
As the seasoned producer of multiple pieces of Christmas content, ranging from articles to case studies to videos featuring reindeer and elves, I’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to Christmas content. Here are my top tips for making a great festive article.
This is where the best ideas come – at the place where your brand and Christmas meet. For instance, you’ve almost certainly heard about the NORAD Santa tracker. Every year, NORAD (the organisation in charge of North American airspace) tracks Father Christmas’ journey around the globe. It’s a great piece of brand marketing, because it perfectly combines Christmas with what NORAD does: tracking stuff in the air. What’s your equivalent?
Christmas can take many forms. There’s Father Christmas and his whole operation, but you also have other festive stories: The Snowman, A Christmas Carol, Saint Nicholas, and more. Even the traditional Christmas dinner with family can be an element of Christmas that your brand intersects with. Spend time with your ideas, and explore them to see if whatever analogy you’ve created holds up. The more you can explore it, the better your end piece will be.
In my experience, Christmas articles are a great time to cut loose and have a bit of fun. And as long as you can make your joke work well, that’s great. The key to making it work, incidentally, is that analogy I mentioned above. Consider the Chistmas article I keep banging on about on LinkedIn. The reason it’s funny is because I fully explored the relationship between operations management software and Santa’s workshop. So while talking about the client’s tech, I can crack a joke about elves retraining from making jigsaw puzzles to making PlayStation games. I can even put in a significant wink to the audience that Father Christmas’ contingency plan for if the sleigh breaks down is to get the parents to deliver the presents. If we hadn’t worked hard to dovetail operations management and Christmas, the joke would fall flat.
If that’s daunting, then good news: you don’t have to be funny. John Lewis isn’t, and they seem to be doing OK.
Lots has been written about how B2B sales is more emotional than people expect, and it’s true. So why not explore that emotion? Why not create a touching scene where, thanks to a little help from your product, your customer is able to enjoy Christmas with the family? Perhaps they were dreading a job running over and stopping them getting home for Christmas, but thanks to your product or service they were able to make it? Perhaps your nifty mobile app helped them do their job while fighting through the shops to get all the Christmas shopping done? There are plenty of emotional moments around Christmas that you can tap into with your brand, if you don’t want to go for a laugh. But if you’re going to do that, you need to go all in on it. Just writing “so Dave made it home for Christmas on time and was a happy chap” won’t cut it. You’ll need something more like this:
“Dave pulled into the driveway, and felt the tension drain from his shoulders. 5:45. He’d done it. No reprimand from his partner for being late again, no disappointed children refusing to make eye contact as he tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault he missed the Christmas film. He’d missed his parents arriving, but no doubt they’d saved a suitcase or two for him to drag upstairs.
The lights were on in the living room, the glow spilling out into the drive. Through the window, he could see the Monopoly board being unpacked. Oh well, peace and harmony can’t reign forever. But, oddly, he couldn’t wait to get in there and play. It was, at last, the Christmas holidays.”
You might have seen the Tesco billboards doing the rounds on LinkedIn recently, and the attendant discussions about brand codes. The truth is that, if done right, breaking your brand rules makes your brand more recognisable – and that’s true with Christmas content, too. So if you’re a brand that never jokes (and let’s face it, those are the ones that worry the most about things not being on brand), that doesn’t mean you can’t do a funny Christmas article. You just do it subtly, as though you’re a stern grandfather cracking a joke in such a deadpan tone that it takes people a moment to realise you’ve made a joke – and then love you all the more for it.
You need to flex your brand with purpose and awareness, of course. If you’re a brand that likes to joke who suddenly produces something terribly somber and unfunny, you’ll look unhinged. But there’s definitely a middle-ground that can be found.
If you’ve got a dynamite concept, and someone says to you something like “can we talk a bit more about our super-premium plus service in there somehow?” then think very carefully. If it threatens the dyanmiteness of the concept at all, say “no” and run away.
The B2B world loves a committee, and people in committees love suggesting things – it helps them justify being on the committee. And lots of people, marketers included, get nervous when they can’t see a clear CTA at the end of a piece, or they don’t see enough USPs mentioned. If that impulse is taking hold, it’s important to remind people that this is a piece of brand marketing. It doesn’t have to sell anything and it doesn’t have to mention any key features – especially if doing so would make the piece weaker. You want the reader to recall your brand, not your product or what it can do.
Coming up with the killer idea that makes your Christmas concept tick is the most important step in the process – but it can be hard. If you’re finding inspiration is lacking, I’d love to help you explore some ideas. Whether it’s the written word or in video form, I’m expert at teasing out the central story of a piece of content – and I’ve been doing it for years, now. I won’t charge you a penny for the chat – and you might get a great idea out of the process. If you’d like to take me up on the offer, just click below.