Top of the PR pops: Christmas edition

Merry Christmas dear readers! Rather than our usual top of the PR pops post we're doing a quick round up of our favourite Christmas campaigns. What ones did you like best? 

Repaying a kindness 

My favourite campaign of the festive period has not been done by a company trying to flog their wares but by a 22 year old student who wanted to help a homeless man called Robbie find somewhere safe and warm to live in 2015.

Dominique Harrison-Bentzen lost her bank card on a night out in Preston on 4th December and Robbie kindly offered her all the money he had, just £3, so that she could get home safely.

Touched by his kindness she started a fundraising page asking her friends to give just £3 to thank him. As the page was liked and shared it was revealed that many more people had been helped by the homeless man in some way and they too shared the page and donated.

Since it began over £28,500 has been raised and Dominique along with others she has met through the campaign have slept rough on the streets for 24 hours in solidarity with Robbie and to raise awareness of homelessness.

Adding a little sparkle on social...

In November the mysterious @TheTwoFairies Twitter account appeared, granting wishes whilst tweeting in rhymes. The identities of the fairies were kept a secret for as long as possible with the branding on the gifts they delivered kept to a minimum.

However, eventually people had enough clues to guess it was M&S.

The account has over 42,300 followers and the fairies have travelled across the UK granting wishes, rewarding good deeds and raising awareness of the campaigns and every day heroes during the festive period.

The campaign has been designed to complement their television advertisement which you can watch below.

Are you a risk taker or do you prefer playing it safe?

Sainsbury’s created a Christmas advertisement worthy of the silver screen. It is based on real events during WWI when British and German soldiers put down their weapons, exchanged small gifts with one another and played a game of football before returning to the trenches on their Christmas Day truce.

The vintage looking chocolate bar which appears in the advert is available to purchase in store with 50p of every £1 going to the British Legion.

However, the advertisement has attracted over 700 complaints from viewers who feel that the ad is disrespectful to the victims of the conflict as the supermarket chain are essentially using the war to promote their business.

What do you think?

The safe bet:

To promote their Christmas jumper range, Sainsbury’s created a low budget film of dad’s doing dubstep to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.

The advert was posted on social media and has since received nearly 1.6 million views. In comparison to their first ad it is a lot less controversial and definitely a lot cheaper to produce.

But is it as effective? Would you really remember it?

I personally didn't make it to the end of the video. 

Love birds...

Ok, we had to mention him. I am sure you’re sick to death of hearing about this wee guy but you cannot deny he is unbelievably cute and the story really pulls on the heart strings.

I particularly enjoyed this post by Jeremy Waite which looks at the insights which can be extracted from the data contained in the brand’s social media channel.

It’s incredible to see just how powerful a story can be when it's built on insights from data.

Here’s the ad in case, by some miracle, you’ve managed not to see it yet.

However, I must admit, as a single girl I very much hope I am not as pathetic as little Monty and will not be disappointed if a mail ordered significant other is not waiting for me under the tree. I would rather my Christmas was more like this... 

Mynewsdesk December highlights

Up to one hundred and fifty charities in six countries will benefit from a 1 million euro initiative to make their communications activities more efficient and impactful.

Each charity will be provided with a new all-in-one brand newsroom and multimedia public relations platform free of charge as well as expert training and communications strategy support.

Employees in Mynewsdesk’s Swedish, German, UK, Danish, Norwegian and Singapore offices have each chosen small and worthy charities that align with their personal social concerns. Our  UK team partnered with JustGiving to identify the small charities that would benefit most from this programme.

Find out more about our programme here...