What’s your plan for getting the most out of Christmas 2018 for your business? If you don’t have one yet, there may still be time to put some publicity-boosting, business-enhancing ideas into action. These examples of businesses around the world getting Christmas right will hopefully give you some inspiration – either for this year or the next.

Bakery chain Gregg’s goes backwards to move forwards with its Christmas PR

The bakery chain Gregg’s has a bit of history behind it when it comes to grabbing the headlines over Christmas. Last year, the brand sparked controversy in the UK when it depicted the baby Jesus as a sausage roll on some of its marketing materials.

This year, Gregg’s has pulled off a far less divisive – but equally cheeky – stunt to gain some added publicity.

Every year, shoppers in Newcastle, UK, gather outside Fenwick’s department store to marvel at its legendary Christmas window displays. To capitalise on the added local footfall, a Gregg’s bakery situated just across the road reversed its shop logo, so the word Gregg’s would read the right way around for the thousands of people seeing it reflected in the department store’s window.

How China’s Christmas village is coping with Trump’s trade war

Did you know that nearly two-thirds of Christmas decorations sold worldwide are made in the Chinese city of Yiwu? Take a look around you, and you may well see something made by of one of the 600 Yiwu-based companies currently manufacturing lights, tinsel, baubles, wreaths and various other trinkets which are synonymous with Saint Nicholas.

Around 30% of Yiwu’s orders currently come from the United States – a worrying statistic for the city’s manufacturers, who must now operate under the altered terms of President Trump’s trade war. The US slapped a new 10% tariff on Chinese imports this summer, and that rate is set to increase to 25% in January.

Thankfully, producers in Yiwu are confident they can keep their Christmas lights shining.

Take Wang Chaoyi, owner of Taizhou Huanyu Lighting, for instance. According to Bloomberg, he isn’t overly worried about the tariffs, because:

“rather than selling [his lights] as strands, he increasingly incorporates [them] into larger Christmas products. So his best prices—5.90 yuan for a 9.3-meter strand, or less than $1 for about 30 feet—are reserved for neighboring businesses that make lighted trees, wreaths, and the like. Those higher-priced holiday items, often destined for big-box stores in the U.S., are better able to absorb the tariff on lights.”

You can read more about how Yiwu’s Christmas decoration manufacturers are staying afloat over at Bloomberg.com.

Iceland goes viral with palm-oil-free ad

As evidenced by Clutch’s finding that 65% of consumers remember TV ads more than any other medium, video content is supremely important for marketers and their customers.

And in some cases, its significance can be greater still.

This TV ad from the budget UK supermarket, Iceland, is just such a case. Starring Rang-Tan, an animated orangutan, it promotes an anti-palm-oil message, as well as the brand’s range of palm-oil-free foods.

Bizarrely, regulators in the UK banned the advert from being shown on TV, as its message was deemed “too political”. That didn’t stop the advert becoming Britain’s most-watched Christmas ad of 2018, racking up millions of views on YouTube and social media.

How great would it be if taking risks and doing something meaningful became the new model for how to achieve marketing success over the holidays?

Elbe fruit shows there’s space for festive innovation in all varieties of company

The German fruit company Elbe-Obst has proven Christmas marketing hacks can come in the most unexpected of packages, by creating a special packaging for its 3-kilo fruit boxes that can be converted into a Christmas gift box using a special lid incorporated subtly into its design.

Not only does this strike us as a smart move for the environment; it’s also a clever way for Elbe-Obst to get their brand out to people on their customers’ Christmas lists, who in some cases may be colleagues or industry peers.

You can read more about Elbe-Obst’s clever Christmas packaging at Fresh Plaza.

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Have you done something ingenious to further your business this Christmas? We want to hear about it.

Main photo by Kiera auf der Heide on Unsplash.