You may be reading this whilst relaxing, but for consumers, the busiest quarter of the year is just getting started! 

With events such as Black Friday, Halloween and Christmas all packed into Q4 consumers are constantly on the lookout for the best deals, and digital OOH has the ability to engage shoppers on-location, showcasing products and displaying offers in real-time.

Almost a third (31%) of all consumers expect to still be shopping during December, while 43% plan to have finished their shopping before Black Friday (IPA, 2024).

Younger generations are most likely to take advantage of the Black Friday sales with 82% of 18-24s and 75% of 25-34s planning to spend at least a quarter of their budget during this time (IPA, 2024).

Last year, shopping centres saw footfall rise by an average of +27.3% during the period before Christmas (MRI, 2024).

Let us show you a few examples of contextually relevant campaigns that harnessed OOH during the festive period…

Pepsi MAX Christmas 2023

Pepsi Max Christmas Interactive OOH
Pepsi Max Christmas Interactive OOH
Pepsi Max Christmas Interactive OOH

We delivered Pepsi Max’s best-performing Christmas ever with their market share significantly increasing YoY.

John Lewis Christmas Tease

We launched two high-impact, bespoke billboards complete with brand ambassadors within proximity to key John Lewis stores in Westfield London and Liverpool One.

Sainsbury’s – A Dazzling Christmas Billboard

A series of special break-through billboards were installed across 3 major cities to promote the Christmas treats Sainsbury’s can offer.

Want to discuss your upcoming digital OOH plans? Get in touch!

Cadbury DOOH

This December Cadbury has launched a real-life advent calendar as part of its Christmas campaign. Twenty-four purple trucks are making their way around the UK throughout December, bringing the #Cadvent calendar to life!

Already making a splash around the country, Cadbury’s purple trucks are revealing treats every day in the run up to Christmas. The spectacular event is supported nationwide through a fun, live digital OOH campaign.

The dynamic campaign is updated daily with the latest photos, videos and social media activity from the previous day’s event. Extending the campaign’s reach even further Cadbury’s have used Digivans to amplify the dynamic content in locations where there is no fixed DOOH media available.

Jeremy Taylor, Strategy Director at Grand Visual commented:

“Being able to share the joy and excitement from #Cadvent events around the country via DOOH is great way to extend the event to those not able to experience it in person.”

The campaign was managed through OpenLoop with creative by Fallon, production by Grand Visual and media planned and booked through PHD and Talon. Elvis were responsible for capturing all footage from the live events.

A photo of our Santa Buddy in place awaiting your tweets

For this year’s seasonal festivities our technologists, Jon Jones and Mike Farrance, have come up with a fun little bit of tech to get you — and our team — in the Christmas mood.

Meet Buddy, our Twitter powered dancing Santa. When you tweet our Twitter account (@GrandVisual) with the words Merry Christmas, Buddy will spring into action. First, from our office jukebox, he’ll select a Christmas song to dance to. He’ll then create a little seasonal greeting to display on a small digital screen behind him. A camera grabs a shot of the screen and Buddy dancing along to the music, before tweeting the photo to you accompanied by a message telling you what song he chose for our entertainment.

Buddy works with the help of some nifty programming and physical computing. The Santa is connected to an arduino controller which is controlled by a Raspberry Pi. The Pi monitors our Twitter account, watching for tweets containing the phrase Merry Christmas. When it picks one up it selects a song from our festive playlist, and creates a Christmas card to display on the screen, whilst at the same time telling Santa to start dancing. A photo is then taken of Santa, the screen, and the tree, which is then packaged up with information about what song was played and tweeted in reply. Pretty straightforward really!

The other benefit of Buddy is that because we save a little money on Christmas cards, we’ve decided to make a donation to the mental health charity Mind.

So, want to see our Santa dance? Then get tweeting to our little friend — just wish us a Merry Christmas.

Post Office DOOH

In a bid to help people get the best out of their local postal service this Christmas, the Post Office has launched a Digital Out of Home campaign to provide information about extended opening hours, self-service counters, and nearest branches. The extensive nationwide campaign kicks off this week across Roadside, Tube, Rail, Mall and City Centre environments.

The campaign includes tactical daypart messages to help customers beat queues by advising them to avoid their busiest times – lunchtimes and Monday’s. The campaign also includes geo-targeted copy on those screens in close proximity to a Post Office offering Self Service or Crown Service to let people know that “Christmas is just around the corner and so are we, just a few minutes away on Spring Gardens” and directs them to their nearest branch.

The tactical campaign was planned and booked by Mindshare and Kinetic, with creative from Dare and production by Grand Visual. The copy lead execution also encourages customers engage with their digital channels @PostOffice and postoffice.co.uk/quickmas for more information on the most efficient way to use the Post Office this Christmas.