In two years that we say that it's the year of threads , and how many chances do we want to give them ?
Yeah , threads , is that talk you up ?
Welcome to the Marketers of the Universe podcast . I'm Tom Innes and I'm the copywriter here at Brew Digital . This month we have a bumper end of year episode and we're kicking things off with what I hope will become a staple of our December podcast lineup Christmas adverts .
Now Hayden will be leading that section and , in his unending and arguably enviable optimism , we'll be attempting to look at both B2C and B2B ads . Are there any B2B ads and is there really any point to them ? We'll have to see . I'm not convinced .
Beyond that , we're going to be checking our answer phone to see what predictions our marketing sages have made for the year ahead . I'm contractually obligated to say that Hayden says something and I quote pretty cool in that section , so definitely stick around for it .
In the coming weeks , you may also notice that the marketers of the universe is getting a bit of a facelift .
This is to give us the flexibility to produce even more content for you , including short form video that gives you snackable insights from the team To see everything we're doing across the Brew Digital verse , be sure to follow us on LinkedIn , youtube , instagram and wherever you subscribe to your podcasts .
Now , with those plugs out of the way , let's get on with the show .
Our first topic today is all around the Christmas campaigns that we love .
I am lucky enough to be joined by Kieran O'Neill , our account manager , by Mark Bundle , who is our senior email marketing manager , by Michele Raffaelli , who is a paid media manager here at Brew , and , of course , the brilliant Debbie Gakutan Jardim de Oliveira , who is our senior social media manager .
So , before we dive into B2C Christmas campaigns because I know that's what everyone wants to do can anyone think of any half b2b christmas adverts ?
I'll jump in first . I didn't want to because I'm proving mark wrong , and I think this is the first time ever . Mark is wrong on something um , offline . He mentioned that there no one no b2b company does christmas ads , but I spent lots of time researching it and I found two examples . The first one is the most recent .
It's a company called oracle where they used the story of the north pole santa preparing all the lists from the email to send the presence , and he used Oracle Secure Cloud to do that . And the other campaign it was actually made by Microsoft in 2015 . That's how far I had to go , and it was this video shot in New York .
I think All the Microsoft employees leave the office , go in front of an Apple store and start singing them Let there Be Peace on Earth , which was a sort of Christmas commercial . And that's the two examples of why Mark is wrong .
No , I'm going to thank Michele for proving me right . Have you got to go back nine years for a real Mark Sorkin video ? I'm not sure it's a real thing . The Oracle ad I saw that in our shared notes and honestly I couldn't find it apart from through the link you provide .
If you Google Oracle Christmas not there you go through Oracle's own Christmas ads not there . You have to specifically search oracle autonomous cloud .
Christmas to find it like , is that a great campaign that has zero visibility ? Are you target of ? Are you target , active target in that campaign ?
no , but if I actively search for something in google and it's still not there , well , that's I mean is that a campaign was an internal thing . They've done and gone . Oh , look look at the thing we did .
Yeah , I mean , I did a quick Google . There is a solid lack of B2B Christmas ads , which have been picked up by other platforms or anything like that , or even on their own websites and , as Mark is basically saying , there's a good reason for that . It's not going to be on TV . It's not going to be on TV . It's not going to be in retail magazines .
There's no point in doing big brand awareness or anything . You're going to spend a huge amount of budget on that . There have been some ones that I have seen , like Staples in America . So this is again an old one .
They offered a Christmas voucher 15 15 dollars to spend in store , online , and it's kind of like a sweet , short , sweet , subtle delight which probably works best . We all know that b2b marketing needs to work hard in a short space of time . What business really has time to sit and watch a minute-long story unfold , especially this close to Christmas ?
Debbie , I know you did some research before and pulled out a couple of other examples . I think it's been a pretty poor showing from B2B .
Yeah , I kid you not . I had to manually jump on all big brands on their LinkedIn and on YouTube to just see what they're up to kicking off and leading into the holiday season and , just like everyone , I didn't really find any solid campaign with the definition of what a true campaign is .
But what I did find are blogs , helpful posts , this type of more organic type of content . There's not going to be a lot of money behind it , but there is still content that exists for this . So a good example of that is Slack .
Slack has some blogs around on what to do with their Slack in terms of using it during the holiday season , planning , you know , planning parties or Slack channels or these type of things .
Zoom in 2023 actually published , I think , a very detailed blog as well on how to use Zoom in virtual parties and all of these things , which would have been handy during COVID times . But there you have it .
I feel like , you know , brands might not necessarily put a lot of money behind it for campaigns , but it doesn't mean that they don't touch this subject .
Okay , so I'm going to go back to something that Kieran said a minute ago and he mentioned . You know we're not going to need these campaigns that are big budget , big TV , widespread audience .
But you know , through the power of advertising and the power of data , we are able to run ads through connected TV , as an example , which gives us the opportunities running stream ads , things like that .
Is there an argument there that you know a B2B business is missing an opportunity to have these kind of big wow campaigns that B2C can , but only targeting their audiences through something like connected TV , so that when you know you're onto Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over Christmas , you're actually also being targeted by , you know , a B2B brand looking to
sell you something for the company you work for .
I'm sorry , that just sounds absolutely horrid , mate , I'm almost at the end of my little marathon , got Deathly Hallows Part 2 tonight . But yeah , I couldn't think of anything worse than I'm about to hear the and it's like have you been thinking about your service space recently ? But yeah , it's a valid point .
I just don't know how to respond to it because I absolutely hate the idea of it .
I mean B2B traditionally slows down November , december anyway , because we're all bored . We want to have Christmas and enjoy ourselves . We don't care about our tech stack right now or our accountancy options . So I think it's disingenuous to try and put that kind of ad into christmas content because it just looks so false .
As debbie says , quite a lot , it's about authenticity , and I don't think that'd come across as authentic from anybody going oh look , we've been dry as hell all year , but here's christmas . Um , but also the buyers aren't in the mindset for it .
If the buyers all slowing down and going off on holiday , why throw money at a campaign that you're not going to have an audience for , or it's not an audience that cares right now ?
I'm also going to say that I feel like the lack of B2B campaigns is basically a result of years of B2B marketers knowing what they're doing . They know that this is a season that is just dominated by noise .
I mean , we're talking about holiday campaigns of B2C , but we also have Black Friday and then you have Cyber Monday and then after that you have something , and they know that this is not the time for them .
So I would actually argue that it's not that B2B businesses do not do campaigns during holiday season , but if you look in the year , there might be other times and seasons of the year that they jump at where it's more relevant for them and more relevant for you know who they're targeting , which is most likely decision makers there you go , you had it .
So , before we jump into talking about John Lewis , does anyone think that we should be running B2B Christmas adverts like this ?
I do think we should , mainly because we don't have data that prove it wrong and so it would be a word test to do , and for all the reasons that have been said so far , actually , the B2B market is slightly on a different phase of the e-commerce .
So all these people that , all these e-commerce festivity and promotion that we mentioned that don't necessarily touch directly B2B unless we are talking about delivery and packaging companies . One thing that would be interesting to test is , across all this noise in e-commerce , having something B2B related could actually cut through the noise .
If you think about all our feeds on LinkedIn , we are not seeing any Black Friday activity or we are talking about is the jaguar campaign , which it's nothing to do with black friday , cyber monday , um . Singles day , golden week , cyber month , christmas , um . So we do have a separate type of attention on those type of activities .
Because of what we've said before , we should use use Christmas to actually connect on an emotional level with those decision makers , because that's the moment where probably they are not bombarded with all this information and they could get the message the real values of your company .
I'm not talking about products , but in a more holistic way , we could use the Christmas campaign through one of the beautiful examples of storytelling , to reach emotionally these decision makers that in January , once the older budget would be approved , they have money to spend and who they will remind the budget is the last , the last point Um many companies financial
year ends in December , some of them depending Europe , america or Asia . It could be um still q4 , q3 , end of q3 , q4 . So we do have these new , fresh budget to spend . Then , if we reach the audience with awareness campaign , with christmas campaign , we , we , we could , we could find something different nice .
I really like the point you've made there and you know , one of the things that we always encourage people to try and do when they listen to this podcast , it is just think a little bit differently , try not to just follow the same thing that everyone else is doing .
And we speak about this all the time in B2B because we acknowledge the fact that there's a lack of creativity in a lot of places . A lot of it is just kind of copy-paste of what other people are doing . We mentioned in the last episode there's an originality problem .
So actually is there a big opportunity right now for a b2b company , whoever they are , to do it ? Michele says yes , we're going to end that conversation there . We're going to come back in 12 months and see who the person who took our advice was .
Moving on to b2c christmas adverts , because I know that's what everyone's really here to listen to and to talk about . Which ones have captured your eye at the moment ? Don't worry about going too much into detail . I just want to hear a kind of list the new coca-cola ad o2 and then m&s nice , nice .
I'll come back and ask you in a minute why anyone else got more to throw in that they've particularly loved kfc , I think is brilliant mine would be and because I also love this brand , it would be etsy with their wear swallow campaign .
Michele . Any to add ?
one ad that I thought I liked was the asda , but then I realized that all these references are I mean , how many young people knows the , a team macgyver , this type of um and and all these christmas campaigns , christmas ads are focused on making us re , re leave what we experienced um 15 , 20 , 30 years ago .
So I just realized that marketers are doing ads for marketers that are not gen z . So we are discussing about these type of ads between us and we like them because they are made for us . It would be nice to have a vision of what they like in um gen x and alpha point of view it's's so interesting .
actually , you know we've spoken about nostalgia marketing on this podcast before . Actually , is that something that all of these adverts are starting to do more and more , and is that going to ostracize the younger audiences ?
I don't think so . I mean , yeah , they are nostalgic . Kelly says , yeah , how many people young people know the A-Team ? Absolutely none , even with the remake a few years ago . But then that's probably not who buys their shopping ads . So I think they're still targeting their audience .
It's just their audience is nostalgic as the Gen Z grow through and they're the ones with disposable income . Things are nostalgic to them like flossing and TikTok dances and Fortnite . They'll get used more . That's not to say that every advert is nostalgic , though . I mentioned the kfc one earlier on and that flies in the face of all of the recommended things .
We've always said listen to your customers , do what your customers tell you and their thing is . You keep telling us to do turkey burgers at christmas and we hear you and we've seen you say it and we don't care . We're still doing chicken and it's hilarious , even though it flies in the face of conventional wisdom I remember they .
They had their christmas burger last year and I never got around to doing it but I still recall the advert they had last year because of the conversation that came around that . So I think that's such an interesting way of almost calling back what you did last year and and refreshing it .
Any other thoughts on some of the campaigns that , um , we've mentioned before Coca-Cola , m&s , etsy , wes , waldo what were the things that stood out for you there ?
I'll talk about Coke , because let's just get into the meat of that . I first started watching it I didn't realize it was AI generated . At this point I went in just blind . I was like , oh , this harks back to that OG 90s . But yeah , it's the first completely generated ai ad for the brand .
I'm not sure really what to think , because as I was watching it I could see some uncanny valley moments and I'm a lover of the 90s aesthetic so it didn't really work with with me after 10 seconds . But it does grab your attention . It sparks a little joy in the moment .
Um , and maybe , I don't know , most people might not even know that it's ai do you feel betrayed , knowing it's ai at the end oh , completely like . Halfway through I was just like this has got some ai bits in it . And then I saw the little caveat being like it's ai generated .
And then I went on all the marketing websites like the drum and stuff and they were just , oh , it's AI generated . And then I went on all the marketing websites like the Drum and stuff and they were just like , oh , it's completely AI generated . And I was like we can go into it later maybe , but it's impactful for the wrong reasons .
But what a way to get your brand into the AI conversation which , let's be honest , it's a topic that's across pretty much every single industry at the moment , and they have completely jumped into that conversation . It's a topic that's across pretty much every single industry at the moment . Yeah , and they have completely jumped into that conversation .
Is that lazy marketing , using AI to do everything for you ?
I think it still , you know , it still needs to be storyboarded , still needs to have a conversation . There's going to be some creative there . Is it lazy conceptually ? Well , yeah , because they're just rehashing an old ad . And then is it from a like an actual creative production point of view lazy ?
Yeah , because you're getting ai to do it , you're not creating a set , you're not , you know , hiring actors and so on .
It's , it's computer generated is that it's economically efficient . At that point , though , that little bit that's advocate .
I've said dystopian nightmare more times this year than I have in any year before . So yeah , I , I just hate it all .
I hate it all love that coca-cola is driving us into our dystopian nightmare .
Before we go into a deep , deep hole of uh regret , um , I'm going to quickly go back to the where's waldo campaign from etsy , because it's actually not one that I've seen and I'm really interested , and then we're going to wrap this up and and try and pick out a few wins for b2b that we can take from christmas adverts like this so let me pitch why where's
waldo is my favorite this year .
Um , first of all , I think that it's a good example of a well-thought-of 360 campaign that doesn't only stay on digitally , but it also crept on Waldo's point of view , by him , you know , going all over the world but finally being seen when somebody actually gifted him something .
So it actually goes into or aligns with the brand's messaging of Etsy , creating moments , memorable moments , through the act of gifting . And I really love that , you know , because , um , you know , waldo is a game that we all know .
We've played it before , um , and the concept of it is actually like , aligns with waldo but also aligns with the brand , uh , but what I love about it more is that they actually use a real etsy um seller to be the one to gift to Waldo , and I thought that that was a very genuine move .
They could have used anyone , they could have used AI , but no , they took the extra step and brought in their community in the story .
Love that it's again going back to that emotional connection . We've mentioned user-generated content so much on this podcast , and I think it's probably going to make its way onto our bingo card for 2025 predictions at some point from someone , I imagine .
What I want us to do now is , in one sentence , wrap up or pick out something that you think B2B marketers can learn from Christmas adverts this year , and I'm going to start with kieran being creative doesn't mean being complicated , making it complicated or expensive .
Simple messaging speaks to your audience , it's on brand , so there isn't a tonal shift all of a sudden which could be jarring for your customer's audience . And I think , because B2B has to serve a purpose , it needs to be engagement or conversion .
Brilliant . Thank you , kieran . I'm not going to make a sarky comment on how that was way longer than a singles sentence , but we'll move on to our next one . Michele , can you give us one please ?
Keep the human side , even if we are targeting industries love that and sites know who you're targeting .
Be human , tell stories . That's nice , debbie .
Let's go with you because I know mark's going to finish us off with a positive whirlwind I would say to use this holiday season to go beyond just seeing metrics and conversions , but actually use it to again remind your audience and your customers what is the purpose of your brands and the value of your brand .
And Mark send us away with a bang , Christmas cracker and all that .
Things for B2B brands to learn at Christmas . It is the one time of year your tone of voice can probably get a little bit tipsy . Don't be afraid to push the boundaries a little bit more . Be a little bit more creative , a little bit more human . It is the one time that will be forgiven .
Bosh love that Brands getting a bit drunk on eggnog .
So you heard it here . First brands . It's okay to get a little bit loose with your language in December or late November , if that's your vibe . Now , before we let our own marketers loose on the eggnog , they were tasked with coming up with a series of predictions for 2025 .
These range the gamut from safe and sensible to the more hot take , and what you're about to hear is just a small sample of what they came up with .
If you head over to our resource hub at broodigitalcom , forward slash resources , we're publishing a bingo card with 25 of our marketing predictions for 2025 , so you can play along at home and see how many we get right . Anyway , let's dial in and see what .
First unheard message sent yesterday at 7.15 pm .
Hey , nasha here , paid media manager at Brew Digital . My marketing prediction for 2025 would be how everything is going to be all about short , impactful content and smarter tech . Going to be all about short , impactful content and smart tech .
We can see how , within the b2b space , linkedin has started rolling out short form videos similar to youtube shorts , so b2b brands and leaders are going to get really , really creative with storytelling in under 60 seconds or less . Let's see if my prediction hit the mark this time .
End of message .
Next message sent to my 2025 prediction will be that AI will roll back an awful lot , at least in terms of its public face . I think a lot of the things at the moment . People have been crying AI , ai and then not actually getting any value from it .
What we'll see is more background processes , adopting this and providing real value , while people aren't necessarily so in your face and out about it .
End of message . Next message sent to .
My 2025 prediction for social media B2B is that we will see more video , but authenticity over aesthetics , but authenticity over aesthetics . We see this a lot with B2C , with Instagrammers , with a lot of influencers , wherein you see really handheld cameras type of video , very much not edited , not super branded .
I think this is going to creep in to B2B type of marketing wherein you will see more of behind the scenes and customer stories and really more genuine type of content .
End of message .
Next message sent to so for the 2021 prediction . On SEO , definitely , ai is a hot issue . I know in every industry or in every marketing channel AI is the hot issue . I know in every industry or in every marketing channel AI is the hot topic . But for SEO , ai is still evolving , so it's not like something's done . It's still kind of we learn from what we .
Also , they'll still keep going on paying attention on the user income , on the keyword aspect and trying to use question-based way , kind of a conversational way , to create your content . That would be more helpful .
End of message .
Next message sent to I do see Exodus from certain End of message . Next message Send to . I do see exodus from certain type of platforms . That's something that may happen more often next year , where the user slash consumer will have more power and I do expect a couple of new platform coming out very strong .
I have a couple of names that I monitored recently , but I don't want to mention them so I won't affect this change .
End of message . Next message .
With the tightening of purse strings across loads of businesses , with kind of political pushes and budget tightenings and taxes and whatnot , we're really going to see companies that don't have defined business objectives , that don't have APRs or KPIs , that don't have defined marketing plans .
I think 2025 is the year that you see the gap between those that do and those that don't . Drift further apart , particularly with the growth of AI and the implementation of AI .
My prediction for 2025 is that Google as a search engine is going to get knocked off the top spot in more age demographics than just the young ones . Now , social media will become the default for the search engine .
It will no longer be google , and that is going to be a worry for many businesses because they're going to have to start really understanding how to utilize the e-commerce functions of these social media platforms .
But on a political side , um , the increase of social media becoming a one-stop shop for news , entertainment and everything horribly affects our democracy a little bit as well , so that'll be something to uh look out for end of message .
Next message sent to I think apple's gonna make a search engine . I think that the doj will look at apple making a monopoly , not a monopoly , making a search engine as an end to google's monopoly . Because apple ?
One of the reasons apple probably hasn't made a search engine so far is because google throws them 20 billion dollars each year just to be the default search engine and part of that deal is that apple don't make any sort of search products .
So now that money stops , I think apple Apple will be like hey , we're going to make a search engine and it's going to be the default , except in Europe , obviously , where we have things running a little bit differently and they probably won't be found a monopoly because they don't have the same market share .
I do think that 2025 is going to be the beginning of the end for Google . It's going to start crumbling . I think it's going to lose grip in some places . Whether that's YouTube or Gemini AI or search , I think it's just going to start cracking in too many places . It's too big of a beast . I think it's just going to start cracking in too many places .
It's too big of a beast . End of message .
Next message Send to my prediction for 2025 is that all social media platforms will punish posts that have outbound links even harder . Now , x or Twitter kind of made it known they hate it . Instagram and TikTok that's just kind of how they are , but we know , not even linkedin hate it too . Um , we understand it , we respect it .
I guess I mean platforms hate it when you ask people to kind of leave their platform and go somewhere else . But what's going to happen is it's going to be like more competitive in the social media platform and all marketers really have to step up , um , their zero click content strategy , uh , in 2025 . So we'll see if that happens or not .
End of messages . Check erased messages . Press one nine .
That is all we have time for today . Thank you so much for listening . We hope you found some useful snippets from our sessions and are able to go and put them into your marketing strategy . We love that you've made it this far through your listen .
We always love making this content and if you could recommend the show to a friend , a colleague , anyone really that you think would enjoy listening , please do . Thank you , as always , to the Brew Digital team for their research and input into today's sessions . They're all feeling very festive at the moment .
Make sure to go check out our past episodes , subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to your podcasts on , and we will see you on the next one . I have been Hayden and these guys are the people in the picture .
I was always shit at Where's Wally anyway because there were too many people in the picture , like if they took the other people out and be able to find Wally . There you go . Stupid shit that Tom has to edit out .