Creative Holiday Greetings go viral.

It’s the week just before Xmas and my email and snail mail box is overfilled with emails containing holiday wishes. Some of them are your ordinary cards with colorful yet predictable ornaments and eCards with basic flash animation and standard greetings. They are pretty generic and therefore easy to forget. Once in a while, however, one or a couple come in that clearly stand out. Many of these creative greeting ideas have been professionally designed not only to bring holiday cheer to their recipients but also to create viral outreach. This year I collected the following:

1. What’s your Wish for the Season?

www.ruderfinnholiday.com
This one was passed on from a colleague, Carol Wallace. It’s a cleverly constructed animation that allows you to type in your holiday wish which is immediately displayed among other wishes that drop from the sky like snow with a holiday music playing in the background. Designed by Rudder & Finn, a public relations company. Several news organizations including the LA Times mentioned this campaign, however I do not have specific stats how it performed in terms of its viral outreach.

2. Save the Earth. It’s the only planet with chocolate.

This earth conscious eCard was sent by another public relations firm ALine media known for representing fashion industry clients. It is a fun rendering of a reindeer with a simple yet clever  eco-friendly message.

3. Holiday Party Excuse-generator

holiday.enlighten.com
The month of December is usually filled with holiday parties some of which you will not be able to attend this year. Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool to help you put together a clever email informing your host/hostes of your absence? Last year folks from Enlighten.com came up with this Holiday Party Excuse-generator and used it to pass some holiday cheer to their customers as well as to drum up new business for their creative marketing agency. In 2007 an email directing users to the campaign’s landing page was sent to just under 3.5K recipients generating an incredible 80% click through rate. The viral aspect of the campaign worked equally well generating 50K site visitors and increasing traffic to enlighten.com by 400%
This year enlighten re-activated the campaign and further increased its viral aspect by seeding it among influencial bloggers and social networks without spending a penny more. Way to go!

4. We Celebrate Peace

Facebook page and Blog
Creative Concepts with whom I worked on several viral videos in 2008 developed these two highly engaging sites to share their holiday thoughts and wishes for peace with their customers and prospective customers. The sites were designed to get everybody engaged and contribute content in a truly authentic, social media-kind-of-way. I am trying to find out the level of response this campaign generated. Check back soon.

Did you receive clever holiday greetings this year? Please share.