Due to the events of 2020, Yankee Candle couldn’t execute their largest consumer engagement activation (during their most important season of the year), so they needed a relevant solution that would resonate with their core consumers in a big way.
As the Christmas season approached, more and more holiday events were being cancelled and families were getting worried that their kiddos were going to lose faith in the magic of Christmas. We needed to prove that Christmas wasn’t going to be cancelled. We needed concrete evidence that Santa and his elves were hard at work ensuring the holiday’s survival…
Here’s where the wild idea came in…
What if we set up a 24/7 livestream in Santa’s Office at the North Pole?
Emphasis on the word “wild.” We created a “livestream” where families of all ages could log on and see with their own two eyes that Christmas was still a go. For the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas, we were going to give everyone unprecedented access to Santa and all the happenings in the North Pole! Christmas can never be cancelled, especially in a year when we need it the most!
HOW DO YOU WRITE SUCH A THING?
For starters – you don’t start with a script. To conquer this feat, we built complex spreadsheets of what we called “Santa’s schedule.” We needed to know where that man was going to be, and what was going on in his office, every second of every day for 3 whole weeks.
From there, we built out our “scenes” (i.e. “Santa Reads The News”) which we strategically placed in our schedule multiple times (and at varying times so that no little ones would catch onto our shenanigans). Scenes included: Santa takes a selfie, Santa checks the naughty and nice list, Santa builds toys, Santa reads a story, etc.
In the end, we generated over 400 hours of content and had audiences hooked. Believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve walked into your doctor’s office and seen little kids tuning into the Santa Cam!
Our wild experiment worked! Santa Cam was featured in a multitude of publications including Southern Living. We should never pick favorites amongst our work, but we did this for the kids and it will always hold a very special place in my heart.
