The holidays provide great opportunities for your company’s seasonal branding to get you noticed. Your seasonal marketing campaigns can define or change how customers perceive you, it’s a time when all your clients will be out in full force comparing brands, searching for the ‘better’ and ‘new’ and how they can relate to particular businesses idea of the holiday’s.
Of course, the real challenge lies in balancing that ‘warm festive glow’ with brand continuity. It’s really important you don’t forget who you are, or your customers might too; check out our previous branding series for details HERE
When it comes to planning your seasonal branding efforts, it comes down to two crucial elements: relevance and consistency. You have to show your holiday spirit, but not drown your company’s personality in glitter and bells. Consistency is important and your brand should be seamless, whether the customer is looking at your business card or leaflet, website or Facebook page, whether it’s Christmas specific or Day-in Day-out.
If you’re considering some festive branding this Christmas, check out printing.com’s top tips and ideas for inspiration:
Logo
It’s risky changing your logo too much as it’s so central to your identity, but it could have a subtle addition in keeping with the season. Take Tesco – the paper crown balanced jauntily over the O barely detracts from their famous logo, but adds an element of fun and evokes nostalgia for family Christmas dinners from years gone by.
Colour scheme
Every season has its own colour palette, which can immediately inspire the right mood – and Christmas has several. There’s the Dickens Christmas of deep reds, greens and gold, the sleek and icy Christmas of silver and pale blue, or the cosy Nordic Christmas evoked by bright red, white and parcel paper brown. If your branding is normally neutral a splash of colour will evoke Christmas cheer, but if you’ve already got a strong colour scheme it may be a challenge matching it up.
Images
Although we all love reindeer and snowmen and Father Christmas, it’s difficult to incorporate this with your normal branding if you’re not usually very playful or exuberant. From subtle snowflakes or holly boughs, to minimal calligraphy or stylish line drawings, there are plenty of ways to incorporate festive images without being too twee.
Words
Carefully crafted copy can inspire those feelings of warmth – be emotive and cheerful, but stick to your core messaging. Copy is also really important if you’re sending out branded Christmas cards – go the extra mile with the message inside so it’s not too generic. It might be tempting to use a festive font, but if you’ve got a house font used across other marketing materials it may help to keep things consistent.
Medium
Think outside the box – you’re not restricted to Christmas cards or promotional flyers! If you have a product, why not adjust the packaging, like the star-studded red cups Starbucks serves its Christmas lattes in? Meanwhile if you’re service-led and looking for a subtle option, seasonal business stationery can inspire the right feelings without impacting on your serious image. And if you want to go all out, branded promotional gifts always go down well!
Branding is all about defining who you are and what you stand for, and associating feelings and concepts with your name. Seasons come and go and can be leveraged, but your core identity should be recognisable all year round.
