Mark Ritson's commentary was provided to MediaGuru.cz by the Proficio agency, which accompanied it with a commentary by Jan Kurel. We are publishing both texts.
Yes, I know. Christmas is long gone. Weeks have passed since the holidays ended, but I still think about them. Not because I am particularly sentimental, but because Czech advertising is now significantly worse than it was a few months ago.
For about six weeks – from mid-November to the end of December – Czech advertisers remembered everything they had ever learned about advertising effectiveness. Then January came and everything was forgotten. And we are back to the miserable, below-average middle ground that dominates the rest of the marketing year. Think about what happened last Christmas.
Christmas straight out of a textbook
The biggest domestic advertisers discovered emotions. Dr. Max came up with a Christmas commercial that continued the story of Zdravíkova – a magical town where people value their health. Filmed in the Barrandov studios, with drone shots that would make any brand manager cry with emotion. Allegro bet on nostalgia and emotions with a deeply human story about how good deeds come back to us. Even Tesco softened up with a gingerbread-flavoured fairy tale, where the hero takes a bite of his grandfather's gingerbread and the whole world changes.
These brands understood what efficiency gurus Les Binet and Peter Field have been shouting for ten years: emotional advertising brings twice the profit of rational messaging. Marketers believe this at Christmas. But in February, they are back to product features, devastating price promotions, overly serious business, and overselling brand promises.
The Christmas season also saw a miraculous, albeit fleeting, conversion to mass marketing. In December, Lidl did not attempt to micro-target left-handed millennials who like artisan cheeses on Tuesdays. Albert went broad and aimed for everyone with Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and a story about an imperfect Christmas. T-Mobile targeted the entire country with "The Bubbles," a fairy tale about two girls breaking through glass walls, which ran in ten European countries.
It's textbook Byron Sharp. The "dark lord of penetration" has convincingly proven that brands grow by reaching all buyers in a category, not by obsessively focusing on supposed "loyalists" or micro-segments. Personalisation must be the most overused, most talked-about marketing buzzword of all time.
And then came January... and the New Year's cuts
Marketers get it at Christmas. They go broad. But in January, they're back to drinking Meta Kool-Aid and paying a fortune to target absurdly narrow audiences with personalised messages that reach seventeen people. All of whom have already bought the product.
Take excess share of voice (a situation where a brand's share of advertising space – Share of Voice – is higher than its share of the market – Share of Market, ed.), the most important and least understood variable in advertising. During the Christmas season, advertisers really do spend money. A lot of money. According to the Association of Communication Agencies, Czech brands invested over CZK 145 billion in advertising in 2024, with the Christmas period accounting for a disproportionate share of this investment. Lidl alone reportedly spent almost CZK 3 billion for the whole year, with the fourth quarter accounting for the lion's share.
Why? Because marketers understand that excess share of voice – investing above your market share – drives growth. And Christmas proves it. Yet in Q1, the same CMOs who approved eight-figure Christmas budgets are cutting media spending in a senseless pursuit of ROI and financing their third new martech platform in six years.
Video and pretesting dominated creative for a while
Another holiday highlight was the emphasis on video. Advertisers paid premium prices for premium creative, and most of it was video. T-Mobile spent the season with "The Bubbles," directed with cinematic flair by MUW Saatchi & Saatchi. Lidl brought in Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper for its international campaign about a little girl's selfless wish.
They were part of a group of advertisers who understood that video – in both television and digital form – builds brands in ways that banners and search simply cannot. And in January? A return to performance marketing, static product photos and the usual programmatic, fleeting content that no one sees, let alone remembers.
During the holidays, advertisers also really cared about whether their creative was good enough. Pre-testing rises globally in Q3 as marketers measure emotional response and brand connection ahead of the holiday advertising season. Partly because they spend so much money, partly because everyone evaluates everyone else's Christmas output – and mainly because ad testing is no longer the ridiculous qualitative safari it was in the 1990s. Now it's predictive, diagnostic, fast. And cheap. Anyone who spends more than ten million pounds on advertising and doesn't test it beforehand should be fired. Not just at Christmas, but all year round.
Emotions work in February too
After six glorious weeks, Czech advertising remembered how to be effective. And the proof is in the Christmas carp. According to Ipsos, the brands that scored highest this Christmas season – Coca-Cola, Dr. Max, T-Mobile and Albert – shared the same characteristics: they were appropriate for the Christmas season, evoked positive feelings about the brand and prioritised emotions over product messaging. These adverts work harder. And yet these adverts are taken off the market much earlier than the less effective ones produced throughout the rest of the year.
It is clear that marketers need to maintain their festive mindset all year round. I am not suggesting that we show Santa Claus in April or play the Kofola jingle with the "golden pig" in July, although given how early the Christmas season starts, this is probably on the agenda. What I recommend is that the principles of Christmas advertising become the norm, not the exception. Emotions work in February too. Mass reach builds brands in the autumn as well. Share of voice correlates with growth in Q2 as well as at the end of Q4. And pretesting works all year round.
The basics don't take a Christmas holiday. Only marketers do.
The reason we abandon efficiency in January is the same reason we break our promises about gym memberships and fibre: it's too easy to fall back into old habits. Performance marketing seems productive. Microtargeting looks sophisticated. Cutting the brand budget seems financially sensible. And no one has ever been fired for doing what everyone else was doing. Right?
Why can't it be Christmas every day? Not the tinsel and carols and awkward office parties – goodness, no. I mean effective advertising. Do we really have to wait another eleven months for marketers to start doing their job properly again?
In the April issue of Pro magazine, I'll look at the effectiveness of creativity even in the months when Santa Claus no longer has a media budget. Until then, keep the Christmas spirit alive and try not to mess it up.
Mark Ritson and Jan Kurel; Source: ProficioJan Kurel: The reality of Christmas in Czechia – Santa Claus's campaign budget doesn't go to everyone
A very nice outside view of our small Czech marketing scene. Yes, I have to agree with everything, but at the same time, it is necessary to call things by their proper names and put them in the context of the Czech Republic. I'm not saying that we're not world-class and that we can't do amazing work – after all, the campaigns for Kofola and Dr. Max, for example, clearly show this.
However, the situation in Czechia is much more acute than it might seem. On the one hand, there are the sales figures that every CMO reports year after year, and so, often under pressure from the CFO, they are forced to resort to communication that is maximally performance-oriented. And then suddenly, at the end of the year, a spot comes from the parent company and lo and behold: the luckier CMOs get a "gift" in the form of a media budget. The others have no choice but to "save" from their local budget, which has already been renegotiated at least once (read: cut, ed.).
Unfortunately, local clients who can afford a locally produced advert with sufficient media support are few and far between. And even Dr. Max would not produce such an advert, in my opinion, if it could not be used in multiple regions.
However, I will return to the beginning: yes, emotions work even in February. But here we have another paradigm – the almost forced effort to measure every pound invested, ideally directly attributed to a specific media channel. And that is the stumbling block for emotions at any time other than December, at least in the minds of many CMOs.
Yes, we at Proficio also try to come up with a defence and a clear explanation of the impact of investments in brand building on specific sales figures. Do you monitor the open rate of your emails or the positive trend in CTR growth in search campaigns just when your Christmas ad is running? Know that Santa Claus is not to blame.
Source: mediaguru.cz