What Christmas Ads Teach us about the Neuroscience of Brand Associations
Key points for how to build a Christmas brand using the neuroscience of associations:
Brand building ultimately comes down to how the brain learns associations, and develops basic categories of knowledge
Brands like Coke and John Lewis have successfully harnessed the power of associative learning to become synonymous with Christmas and The Winter Holiday Season
Association design also has a significant impact on consumer psychology, which can be clearly seen with beer brands
In the long history of advertising, plenty of commercials have annoyed, and even enraged their audiences. Only a select handful, however, have produced the kind of "cringe" reaction as Peloton's 2019 Christmas advertisement.
Few readers will need reminding, but the ad depicted a young woman coming home to find that her husband had bought her a Peloton exercise bike for Christmas. The rest of the ad covers her vlog-style documentation of her workout regimen over the next few weeks, pedaling along with a facial expression that can only be described as "exasperated ambivalence".
Predictably, the ad was met with mockery, derision, and countless parodies.
It's easy in hindsight to poke fun in retrospect, but you can easily see the seed they're trying to plant for their consumer: the idea of a Peloton Bike as a must-have Christmas gift.
In the aim of the commercial, they're far from alone. For most brands, the winter holidays are a massive opportunity for seasonal sales and for tapping into the consumer psychology of gift-giving.
But for certain brands who think bigger, Christmas is part of a larger brand strategy. It becomes an essential element for consumer associations, naturally tapping into the way humans learn. How do brands leverage Christmas in this way? Let's dive into the neuroscience of Christmas brands.
How the Psychology Of Associations Impacts Brand Strategy
Before we can see how Christmas comes in, we need to examine what a brand is at the level of neuroscience. Put simply, a brand is a "concept" - a collection of associations that are organized in our brain's semantic network.
In this way, brands are just like everything else we've come to know. We understand the concept of a "tree" as a "woody, leafy plants that are typically pretty large," etc... Brands are the same way, with their own sets of associations. Coke is forever tied to "happiness," Apple to "minimalism", Under Armour to the "triumphant underdog," etc.
These associations are big business, and building them is no easy task. And while there are no "hacks," there is a crucial strategy that takes advantage of how the brain naturally learns about all concepts in the world (including brands). It's called a prototype.
Think about learning a concept we've all learned: a dog. Chances are, you were never sat down and told the defining features of canines. Instead, our brains - being statistical sponges - just soak in this information about the world. You've encountered 100s of different dogs in books, movies, and life, which has helped build it out in your mind.
But here's the thing: The type of examples you get matters how quickly you develop the concept of "dog". Research finds that learning is best supported when you have outsized exposure to a prototype: a "good representative" for that concept. For dogs, for example, most people probably think of a dog like a golden lab instead of a hairless chihuahua. Of course, these are both, by definition, dogs, but the lab is more prototypical.
Throughout a lifetime, you'll probably get the concept of "dog" regardless. But you'll learn much more quickly if you start with golden labs and then branch out to chihuahuas than the other way around.
So what does any of this have to do with brands and Christmas? Holiday advertisements are like golden labs: they're the prototype for the broader concept the brand is working to associate. Because of this, they can become a crucial element of brand strategy.
With this framework in mind, let's come back to Christmas.
Brand Building with Christmas Advertisements
For brands who play the long game, Christmas serves as a stellar prototype for building broader associations. Consider Coca-Cola.
The brand has been driving this connection through seasonal packaging, commercials, and advertisements galore since 1931! And while they didn't invent Santa Claus (as the popular myth would have you believe), their marketing team did create the cultural image we all have of him. This is why Santa is always decked out in Coke colors - a red robe with white trim. Think Christmas, and Coke is likely one of the first brands to come to mind.
Across the pond, the undisputed king of Christmas Ads is the British retail giant John Lewis. While they haven't had quite the Christmas history that Coke has, their recent holiday tradition has become a phenomenon. Every year since 2007, they air a heart-warming Christmas commercial.
From a cartoon friendship between a bear and a hare (2013), to an endearing alien encounter (2021), John Lewis somehow seems to outdo himself each year. It's become a Christmas tradition that produces almost as much anticipation as the presents themselves.
There's a bigger strategy at play for Coke, John Lewis, and other big brands with a consistent Christmas presence. Eggnog brands aside, no one wants Christmas as their sole association. Recall that Christmas is the "golden lab": it serves as the prototype for a broader concept.
For John Lewis, their core brand concept goes beyond the holidays. Bolstered by its operation as an employee-owned co-op - the largest such business in the UK. - it's tied more generally with wholesomeness, family, and tradition. And what better, more prototypical example is there for this than Christmas?
So while they get a healthy boost in sales during the holiday season and benefit significantly from that specific association, these more general associations carry it in the minds of shoppers year-round. This process is aided by other campaigns that focus on different aspects of "wholesomeness" (e.g., family life, everyday gift-giving), which broaden the concept beyond Christmas.
Christmas also serves as a prototype for happiness, which is why it has worked so well for Coke. Christmas is, after all, a merry time. And it's through the rest of its countless, happiness-oriented campaigns (e.g., Open Happiness) that it builds the associations out more generally.
Association Design meets Consumer Psychology
The prototype strategy doesn't begin and end with Christmas. Consider the associations of beer brands.
Here, brands are constantly competing to be top of mind for that must-see game: Bud Light invests millions each year to be the official sponsor of The National Football League, while Miller hammers home that sports viewing is "Miller Time." Meanwhile, in Europe, you can't think about The Champions League without instantly thinking about Heineken. Wherever you look, beer brands - especially of the light beer variety - dominate our associations with sports. The association between beer and sports have become a crucial component of consumer psychology.
But if sports aren't on? Unlike the pumpkin spice latte, these mass-market beer brands are in the business of appealing to a much more comprehensive range of contexts. Just like Coke and John Lewis, here's where zooming out and seeing the broader associative network is critical. For these brands, sports serve as the prototype for the broader concept, in this case, camaraderie. Getting together with a bunch of friends for the big game, beer in hand, exemplifies this.
And of course, if you look at their full range of campaigns, these beer brands have demonstrated a much more general brand strategy centered around these attributes. Think "This Buds for You" (Budweiser), "Official Beer of Guy's Night out" (Coors), "The Night is Young" (Heineken), to name a few. When we take the bigger picture into account, these brands aren't competing to be the best beer for "sports", but the best beer for a deeper sense of camaraderie and belonging.
All in all, using a prototypical exemplar can provide a significant boost to brand associations. Sure, Coke still would have become the "happiness" brand over time if it had just run many different happiness-oriented campaigns. But utilizing a prototype gets to the essence of brand building, as it taps into the way the brain naturally builds associations. This is a crucial, but often under-appreciated element of branding psychology.
Christmas ads are a cultural phenomenon. But when we look carefully, they aren't just about seasonal shopping, holiday guilt, and gift-giving. Many ads are part of a larger strategy and aren't merely about Christmas.
And thankfully, only very few are about giving your significant other an exercise bike.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
About the author
Matt Johnson, PhD is a researcher, writer, and consumer neuroscientist focusing on the application of psychology to branding. He is the author of the best-selling consumer psychology book Blindsight, and Branding That Means Business (Economist Books, Fall 2022). Contact Matt for speaking engagements, opportunities to collaborate, or just to say hello
References for “Building a Christmas Brand with The Psychology of Associations”
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John Lewis Co. (2021) John Lewis Partnership: Our History, https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about/who-we-are/our-history.html
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