Christmas Ads

We've written previously about holiday-themed ads and how to best tie into the season to encourage customers to buy products and services. As we approach the winter holidays, let's take a look at some fresh winter ads.

This is another example of adding an image to a standard ad to brighten it up and evoke the season. It's easy and, quite often effective with minimal work required. Basically, it is an ad for businesses to do just that: pop in an image and some copy and run it in the newspaper.

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In contrast to the simple approach above, this is a successful promotion because the products featured are all about Christmas. The image is large and eye-catching. It makes you think how important it will be to have festive dishes to serve your holiday guests. "I will never hear the end of it from Aunt Martha if my table isn't perfect!"

Similar to the newspaper ad, this one brings in holiday imagery with the decorations and the tree and uses standard content (other than the headline and the event details). It would have been great if the image of the mall showed holiday decorations as well.

In this flyer, the content and imagery all tie into Christmas without feeling forced. The design even incorporates dolphins—not your typical holiday character—along with penguins! Yet it somehow works. Plus, the colors definitely say Christmas but reinforce the IHOP branding at the same time. Most importantly, it makes me hungry for pancakes.

Decorations, red and green colors and a succulent turkey—that's what you expect to see in a food ad. The low price is large and draws the eye. Then you see the gift card and you are ready to race out to take advantage of this delicious offer . . . but then you realize "home delivery" is for the newspaper and there is no dinner involved.