This Christmas shopping season will look different compared to years gone by. How is this going to be reflected in your Christmas video marketing strategy? Around this time in the year, video production companies, HR managers, and marketers are like crazy looking for ideas for corporate or brand videos to delight their leads and customers, and even social media audiences.

If you think about it, the Christmas season is a time when new shopping behaviors emerge. But 2023 has been a year of deep changes worldwide.

This shapes business and consumer behavior in unprecedented ways. It also brings new feelings, new corporate attitudes, and video marketing opportunities.

Christmas is the time of face-to-face interactions. Because of this, it’s time to create an effective video marketing strategy.

These interactions have become one of the things we want most in many places. For example, the world is facing many geopolitical conflicts, and many domestic economies are struggling.

This means that, unfortunately, many people will not see their loved ones this year.

Yes, Christmas is in the air. But this year the season needs a personal approach.

In this article, I’ll give you marketing ideas and strategies for your Christmas corporate, brand, or company video. I’ll also share key facts and stats to help your video production company or creative team know where to point.

I believe that Christmas and New Year videos are great ways for organizations to be creative in advertising, but this also requires a strategic approach.

Here you have it…

Marketing Ideas and Strategies For Your Corporate, Company, Or Brand Christmas and New Year Video

Video consumption data and statistics play against your brand seasonal video

One of the first things you should do and that most videographers often forget, is what the numbers have to say about the new video they have in mind. Thinking about video consumption and viewership is quite important, as it reflects the potential of your creative approach and how the video should be distributed.

Each day, consumers use product demos, video reviews, and unboxings to learn about products before they buy them.

Also, corporate videos, face-to-face digital meetings, and one-to-many meetings through platforms like Zoom have become the norm for the public and private sectors.

For example, back in March 2020, Zoom was seeing 200 million daily meeting participants (not DAU). The following month, this figure had risen to 300 million.

Video consumption this year has exploded, far exceeding the best predictions for video consumption for 2021.

Nielsen reports that home-bound consumers have led to a 60% increase in the amount of video content watched globally. According to their studies, time spent per viewer watching the news and entertainment content is going up as the spread of COVID-19 worsens.

Even back in 2018, around 87% of consumers said they wanted to see more video content from brands in the next year.

2018 is way behind.

So, what does this mean for your brand video for Christmas and new year?

It’s a tricky question.

On the one hand, we see that video consumption has exploded. However, on the other hand, we see that video creation is within the reach of any organization.

The latter means that you have to try much more to get the attention of the viewers.

You must double your efforts to increase engagement.

In a YouTube survey, 50% of the Gen and Millennial generations said they “couldn’t live” without video in their daily lives.

That’s your opportunity.

If you are thinking about YouTube as your distribution platform for your greeting videos, my recommendation is that your video marketing strategy starts way ahead.

YouTube prioritizes channels that are consistent in terms of uploading new content to their channels on a periodical basis, for example, weekly. If this happens daily, even better.

It takes an average of 22 months for a YouTube channel to reach 1,000 subscribers on YouTube according to data from TubeFilter. That’s if the channel is uploading videos consistently and using some best practices.

This means that if you are expecting organic views for your videos, you need to think about your Christmas video marketing as a long-term strategy that you can repeat year after year, but that requires planning.

Thinking about these videos as part of a general strategy and not only a seasonal one will make the difference in terms of building an organic audience.

Now, the key resides in how to make brand video marketing content that sticks to your audience. Video marketing is not useful at all if it doesn’t engage with your particular audience.

Key Questions Before Making Brand Christmas Videos

If you are wondering what are the things you should take into consideration when creating a corporate video, you’re starting off on the right foot.

Your corporate or brand Christmas video is a big decision. In many cases, a video production company will help you with this. But in many other cases, this will be an internal project lead by your marketing or creative team.

There are a few questions you need to take into consideration in order to create the right script and decide on the creative assets:

• Who is your target audience?
• How long should your corporate Christmas video be?
• What is the video about?
• What format works best for the chosen audience?
• Where are the videos going to be played?
• Is it on mobile devices or on a desktop?
• Are the videos going to be uploaded to a video platform like YouTube, Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, or even TikTok?
• Are the videos going to be displayed on any of these platforms’ landing pages or on a corporate landing page?
• Based on all this, what’s the optimal video length?

Experiment With New Formats: Long Vs. Short Greeting  Company Videos

According to Facebook, the optimal video length for better engagement across all pages sizes is between 2 and 5 minutes for uploaded videos. But YouTube takes you seriously when you use longer videos (from 8 minutes, on average) because this increases ad engagement.

Does this also apply to your Christmas marketing videos?

If your video will be publicly available through a platform like YouTube or Facebook, you should focus on video viewing engagement and video SEO. This will help your video to be recommended by these platforms because they see that there is interest.

By doing this, you’ll also increase exposure and buzz, which translates into more eyeballs for your marketing message.

The more people view your videos in a shorter period of time, the more likely you are to get extra exposure. If this doesn’t happen during the first couple of hours after making your video available, chances are that this extra push won’t take place.

This brings us back to the questions list from above. Your Christmas video can be 20 seconds long, or 20 minutes long. Regardless, your audience needs to love it.

Animation Christmas videos tend to be short, often less than 60 seconds. While videos featuring people are usually longer, around 2 minutes and even more.

Use Popular YouTube Video Types For Inspiration

Did you know that over a third of all internet users use YouTube? YouTube is a mainstream source of inspiration. Knowing the types of videos that have become popular among audiences will help you know what your Christmas video should be about in terms of style.

Approximately 96% of 18-24-year-olds in the U.S. use YouTube. This makes this platform a key part of most video marketers’ arsenal.

Millennials fuel YouTube’s enormous growth. In fact, Comscore mentioned that millennials are YouTube’s Die Hards.

At the same time, the Gen Z generation is also an important part of YouTube’s growth in terms of viewership. For example, 50% of Gen Z viewers say they can’t live without YouTube.

So, what has all this to do with your corporate video marketing for Christmas and New Year?

YouTube’s stats are an inexhaustible source of ideas and resources that you can use. Simply by looking at which types of videos are the most attractive and effective, you can focus on the videos that your audience is likely to prefer.

According to Mediakit, these are the top 16 types of videos:

1. Commentary: Commentary videos focus on YouTubers sharing commentary or opinions on a topic.
2. Product Reviews: Videos with feedback on a product o service.
3. How-Tos and Tutorials: These are educational videos.
4. Top Lists or listicles: Videos that feature a list of your picks for a particular category.
5. Comedy: Videos that incorporate comedic elements to provide humorous entertainment to viewers.
6. Challenges: These videos challenge viewers or participants to raise awareness about certain causes.
7. Reactions: Reaction videos are made to capture the brand’s or participants’ reactions to a particular content piece or real-world event.
8. Q&A: Answering questions often asked through social media channels.
9. Interview: Video conversations between at least two individuals.
10. Docuseries: Several video parts that creators release in segments to build anticipation and nurture a more loyal following.
11. Educational: Thought-provoking, interesting, and cultural video content.
12. Music Videos: We all love music, right?
13. Narratives: Narrative videos entail the brand narrating a report of either real or fictional events.
14. Gaming: Gaming videos capture players playing a video game, or even its parody.
15. ASMR: ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is a genre of YouTube videos that causes “tingly” sensations when viewers see and hear certain videos.
16. Sports: Reviewing, watching, or discussing a sport of some kind.

Consider creating various types of videos over a three-month period of time (this audio explains the skills to create personalized videos).

Comedy videos are a clear winner on many occasions because they connect so well with a wide audience.

But you can also create interviews with employees, the management team, and even clients.

For example, if you have employees with very different cultural backgrounds, how about interviewing several of them to understand and share how they experience these celebrations in their own cultures?

Viewers Love Videos With Children

Christmas videos with children are common. Here is something you should plan for, based on your target audience and type of product or service… According to a Pew report, YouTube videos aimed at children under the age of 13 are highly popular:

“More broadly, videos featuring a child or children who appeared to be under the age of 13 – regardless of whether the video in question was aimed exclusively at children or not – received nearly three times as many views on average as other types of videos.”

Does this mean that you must necessarily add children to your Christmas videos? Not really. In my opinion, rather, it means that content created for children reaches a wider audience.

In addition, Nativity and New Year videos are strongly linked to children. This means that in a lot of cases, adding children footage to your videos will be totally aligned with what studies show.

Four Reasons Why You Need To Re-think Your Christmas Video Marketing Strategy For Your Company

There are several reasons why you can’t just start shooting a fun video or even an emotive one just because. There are solid reasons why you shouldn’t even consider just buying a Xmas video template because it’s cute or even cheap.

Don’t take me wrong. Cute and cheap videos are good things… If it serves the purpose of your business goals and video marketing strategy.

Let me share with you four reasons why your video production team, advertising agency, and, of course, your own in-house creative masterminds should think twice about the importance of your video marketing strategy for these videos.

1. A Xmas Corporate Video Helps your brand re-engage with your audience

Between October and January, most audiences out there are expecting a brand video in their inbox, preferred social media platform, or even on their mobile devices thanks to platforms like WhatsApp. This makes Xmas brand videos the perfect occasion to engage again with your brand audience.

According to Wordstream, the 25-34 (millennial) age group watches the most online videos and men spend 40% more time watching videos on the internet than women.

Take this into consideration when creating your script, aligned with your target audience. For example, if your target audience is clearly divided by genre, you can create a personalized video to target women, personalized videos for men, even for kids, or for just any segmented audience and marketing niche.

A common request around this time in the year is a personalized video from Santa Claus. Personalized Santa videos work really well because it has become a universal “influencer”.

2. Launch A New Product Making A Promo Video For Christmas

Remember. Your target audience is expecting your brand video. Christmas videos become then a perfect promotional tool for new or existing products and services.

The holiday season is the perfect excuse to start with your video marketing.

From startups to big corporations, there are no excuses. There are countless cost-effective apps to make videos online.

According to Nielsen, digital adoption and new buying behaviors are on your side. With improvements in technology, infrastructure, and customer experience, buyer adoption of online retail shopping has consistently increased over the last two years.

All this coupled with a reduction in barriers to trial digital and physical products.

Use this opportunity to launch a new product. This applies to new products, product updates, and even infomercial videos focused on the upcoming year.

3. A Timely Video Boosts Up Your Corporate Online Presence And PR

Memorable Christmas video marketing and also New Year video strategies can have an average impact of three months. If you think about it, that’s a lot! It gives you enough room to boost your online presence. It’s also a great opportunity for a PR strategy around different Nativity activities that you can showcase with video.

Make your seasonal videos memorable. Don’t think about your video as just another item in your to-do list. Think about them from a strategic perspective.

These videos can become powerful assets that allow you to be creative in advertising.

For example, you can be creative in advertising with a personalized video marketing campaign that helps you make videos that are unique to each individual.

Imagine that you have 2,000 customers in your CRM or even on a spreadsheet. With Pirsonal, you can automatically make a personalized video for each one of them in no time.

Personalized videos are about 160% more effective than generic videos. And we’ll know that video is king.

If you use personalized videos, don’t expect a lot of views on YouTube. You’ll instead get a lot of individualized views, with a direct personal impact and higher 1:1 engagement.

Here is a personalized video example for Christmas:

Would you just create a video and launch a video ad campaign on YouTube or Facebook?

Hopefully, you know the answer to that question!

A memorable holiday video can go a long way and even get viral. Video personalization can help you get there.

When was the last time you saw a Christmas card shared all across the internet?

4. Christmas Videos Help Your Brand Increase Employee Engagement

Employee engagement in the workplace is a top priority for many organizations. Have you ever wondered about ways to increase employee or staff engagement? Christmas videos can unite your employees around a cause.

But, what’s the workplace anyway? It has totally changed over the last decade.

Take, for instance, how the working market has changed during COVID-19. According to a Gartner HR survey, 88% of organizations have encouraged or required employees to work from home due to Coronavirus.

In the same way, Gartner reveals that 41% of employees will likely work remotely at least some of the time during post Coronavirus Pandemic.

With data like this, those responsible for staff engagement have to read between the lines.

Corporate videos are not just a PR asset. Corporate videos are an efficient and cost-effective way to engage with different people within an organization.

According to Insivia, the retention rate when people watch video skyrockets to 95% compared to just 10 percent with standard text communication. And 75% of surveyed executives admitted to Forbes they watch work-related videos on business-related websites at least weekly.

Let’s take this into context.

Greeting corporate videos can become a powerful internal communication and employee engagement tool.

This year, organizations should “overdo” their engagement efforts, because many employees are going through a very difficult professional and personal time.

Employees need organizations to go out of their way to connect with them.

For example, your team, your organization’s employees need to be reminded of the incredible achievement and contribution to your brand and organization.

Ideas For HR, Video Production Companies And Marketing Teams To Partner Up And Make The Christmas And New Year Celebration An Engagement Machine

These videos are an opportunity to create cohesion in any team, regardless of size. Let me share a few ideas for team engagement, creative agencies, the production team (in-house or outsourced), and your marketing staff.

Collaborative Video

Make each and every team member part of the video production, even through collaborative videos. This video reminds me of when with my previous startup we created one of the first collaborative music apps in the market. It’s a play-safe approach:

Corporate and HR videos offer a great opportunity to increase talent engagement. In a moment where new team members are looking for remote positions, face-to-face activities for many will be equal to annual corporate retreats.

Parody Video

This other video uses humor, in a very corporate environment that can be serious and even boring like the investment world.

Viral Video

Want to go big? Check what WestJet did a few years ago…

The WestJet Christmas Miracle video is a great example that combines PR, social media buzz, even some kind of guerilla marketing, and well-crafted professional video production.

Fast forward three months and, with the help of 175 WestJet volunteers, three airports and Santa himself, we made a Christmas miracle happen for more than 250 guests on two Calgary-bound flights.

Fun Team Video

If you have a small team, want to keep it warm, classy, and fun, you should check this video example now:

I’m a curious person, so I went ahead and checked this agency’s other YouTube channel videos and found that they had created any Christmas videos over the years.

This agency has less than a thousand YouTube subscribers, so I am tempted to believe that the views they have on their videos are mostly organic. Check out the following video they created:

In this case, this reinforces the concept that making videos with a surprise and humor component is very successful and increases the chances of getting more organic views.

Benefits of Christmas Videos For All Types of Organizations

1. Christmas videos are a way for brands to increase customer engagement during the holiday season. This is when many people expect these video messages, so it’s a great way to get in front of them and make an impact.
2. Brands can use this as an opportunity to promote their products or services with short videos that give viewers a glimpse into what they have going on at the company.
3. Christmas videos help show an organization’s appreciation and gratitude to customers with personal video messages. There are many ways that this can be done, such as sending out thank you cards or sharing how they make products.
4. Christmas videos help brands boost extra sales, especially in the e-commerce space. These videos are a great way to get your customers more interested in what you have to offer. They also provide a sense of nostalgia for those who may not celebrate Christmas.
5. Christmas videos are predictable. You can populate your content marketing content by using the same video every year, or you can add a new twist to it each year.
6. Christmas videos can also be personalized with software online. With specialized video software like Pirsonal, you can automatically personalize Christmas videos online with the name of your contact list.

Customized And Personalized Video

If you want to improve customer experience, invite your leads and customers to make their own videos in a totally personalized or customized way.

For example, you can ask them to fill out a web form, and when they fill in the web form, a personalized or custom video is created automatically.

There are several ways in which the personalized video can be displayed to the user:

• The video can be rendered and displayed within the mobile application or web application as part of a process.
• The personalized video can be sent by email. This way, the user will open the link and find a personalized landing page that shows the video created for or by the user.
• The video can be sent through social networks or direct messaging platforms like WhatsApp or SMS.

Video personalization can help your brand connect with customers through their emotional motivators.

You can also choose a mix of options.

You can help your employees to feel special with a personalized video for Christmas and New Year. Considering that most organizations have data about their employees, use this information to create personalized videos with key dynamic fields like:

• Employee name
• Department
• Position
• Years in the organization
• Key department achievement
• Position promotion
• …

For many, this is the first time working from home. No matter if every year your organization engages with thousands of applicants, or if you only have room for one more. Use this opportunity to empower your HR engagement efforts during this season.

The same concept applies to associates, contractors, freelancers, or other people that add value to your organization in one or another way.

Make your video a Christmas festival, a celebration. A corporate celebration video can involve many people in your organization. This, in turn, will impact the personal network of each individual. The results will go much further and will become a branding activity, that started with staff engagement.