Dive Brief:
- Bloomingdale’s, Apple, and Old Navy are among the U.S. brands whose holiday ads have created the most engagement so far this year, according to Amobee Brand Intelligence.
- Bloomingdale’s led the list with a controversial print ad that many thought glorified date rape and spurred 34,000 tweets—30% negative.
- German supermarket chain Edeka attracted nearly as much engagement with an ad in which a grandfather fakes his own death to get his family to visit for Christmas.
Dive Insight:
Data from marketing tech company Amobee says that Bloomingdale’s, Edeka, John Lewis, Apple, and Old Navy are the brands that have been most successful in attracting attention in the social media with holiday ad campaigns so far this year. Crunching data from more than 600,000 sites, Amobee found that Bloomingdale’s has created the most engagement — much of it unwanted — with a catalog page that suggests date rape. Bloomingdale’s was forced to apologize for the ad, but it ultimately produced 34,000 tweets, with almost a third negative.
Another ad from German grocery chain Edeka stirred controversy to come in second on the list, while British John Lewis was third with the sentimental “Man on the Moon” ad, which has garnered 21 million YouTube views. Stateside, Apple and Old Navy are owning the Christmas season’s more positive vibes. Apple’s ad features Stevie Wonder and Andra Day singing “Someday at Christmas,” and it has been viewed 2.6 million times on YouTube.
Old Navy spots featuring Portlandia stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Snoop Dogg, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Kumail Nanjiani together have been viewed more than 9 million times on YouTube, Amobee says. Those numbers represent just 14% of the buzz that the Bloomingdale’s faux pas brought in, however, making it clear that in the social media, no publicity is bad publicity.
