You know what time it is: time to raid your cheap liquor stash, clear off your desk, and say goodbye to the agency office for a few days. It’s also time to review the many, many, many agency holiday cards in our inboxes!
Here’s the first in our series of roundups; the inaugural post stars Digitas Health, Y&R, JWT, mcgarrybowen and Cole & Weber.
-For its holiday effort, “Group HUG 2014” (video above), Digitas Health is calling on viewers to “turn ordinary mouse clicks into cash donations” for charities. Simply head on over to Digitas Health’s Facebook page, nominate a charity, like the charities you think should win by linking and sharing and watch as the days unfold as there’s a new round of charities every week.
-Y&R goes all text in their holiday card, which calls on viewers to share what they’ve done for others this year using the #CLICKandSHOUT hashtag.
The video, as you can see above, is a sort of all-in-one hashtag telling us something we already knew: trending tags and shares don’t amount to much without actions.
The “click and shout” page features some of those actions, and agency employees have begun using the tag, which began with CEO David Sable’s completion of the famed Ice Bucket Challenge back in August, to highlight various humanitarian projects.
JWT took a different route, playing on the inclusiveness theme by offering users a card for every holiday — not just the big ones. Here, for example, is a card for National Flashlight Day:
One for International Mountain Day, which closely resembles International Joy Division Appreciation Day:
…and our personal favorite, National Bah Humbug Day.
Did you know that National Bathtub Party Day is a thing? Neither did we, but JWT’s card collection taught us that — among many other things.
That brings us to mcgarrybowen, which went the pop culture route by tying recent phenomena to the holiday season via some Instagram animation and the “hack the holidays” theme:
-First, a bit of charity.
-Next, remember the guy with the $55K potato salad? Of course you do.
-If you live in Colorado, Wisconsin, Alaska, or Oregon, you might get to sample some baked goods this holiday.
-Tired of hearing about “Serial?” Too bad!
-There’s more on the “hack the holidays” Instagram page.
To round up this first roundup, Seattle’s Cole & Weber used Vine to provide us with six-second summaries of our favorite holiday films. Here’s Christmas Vacation:
The underrated classic Bad Santa:
And, yes, The Godfather (which we never really remembered as a Christmas film).
There are many more on the Nutshell Classics site.