The thought of elves packing gifts in an automatized fulfillment center doesn’t conjure the same cheerful image as Santa’s workshop. But when used creatively, technology can make miracles happen just in time for the holidays.

Rich in tradition, ritual and nostalgia, it may seem as though cutting-edge technology doesn’t lend well to the holiday season. But technology—which can include anything from the digital platforms we use each day to more cutting-edge experiences—is the closest thing we have to magic. “I think Christmas campaigns try to steer clear of technology,” says Andy Hopkinson, Lead Producer at MediaMonks. “But there’s really nice ways that technology can make the things we do all the time quite fun.” Brands who don’t shy away from tech can realize imaginative campaigns that bring holiday magic to life.

Modernize Tradition

For holiday campaigns, each tradition or symbol becomes opportunity to modernize and add a creative twist. Take letter writing, for example. It’s a yearly tradition for kids to write letters to Santa, detailing their both their good behavior and the gifts they hope to receive.

If any brand has embraced this tradition with gusto and style, it’s Macy’s: the retailer has supported the tradition for years to benefit the Make-A-Wish foundation. Three years ago they upgraded the ritual by asking kids to trade in their paper and pens for an iPad and magical stylus. The Wish Writer pen and its accompanying app—made by JWT New York in collaboration with MediaMonks—allows kids to write digital letters in animated “magic ink.” If they need inspiration for what to say, the app provides several activities that reinforce good behavior, which kids can mention when they Santa if they made the naughty or nice list. The fact that children can write to Santa through a visually exciting digital platform—mirroring how they communicate with friends intuitively—adds a sense of immersion and realism to the campaign.

Digitally Deliver Holiday Cheer

Today’s platforms strive to connect people, so why not use them to deliver holiday cheer in ways that extend beyond a simple social post or hashtag? Just like the Wish Writer example above, supporting native user behavior on popular, everyday platforms can help add a sense of identification or realism. Perhaps one of the most trusted apps for orienting one’s place in the world is Google Maps, so when Google tracks Santa’s activity through the app each year, even Scrooges may have a tough time claiming the jolly holiday mascot isn’t real.

One great starting point for designing an interactive holiday campaign is to consider how everyday platforms can enhance it. When Snapchat unveiled its lens studio, we delivered the holiday cheer straight to users’ phones through a festive world lens. The “world lens,” or small AR model users can place within their surroundings, features well-known Snapchat characters and mascots appropriately dressed for the season on a bank of snow. It’s a bit like putting yourself in a snow globe with the mascots that are brought to life, which you can then share with friends. Because it’s rendered in a communications platform, one can imagine plenty more opportunities for such technology to bring people together—which is what the holidays are all about.

One great starting point for designing an interactive holiday campaign is to consider how everyday platforms can enhance it. When Snapchat unveiled its lens studio, we delivered the holiday cheer straight to users’ phones through a festive world lens. The “world lens,” or small AR model users can place within their surroundings, features well-known Snapchat characters and mascots appropriately dressed for the season on a bank of snow. It’s a bit like putting yourself in a snow globe with the mascots that are brought to life, which you can then share with friends. Because it’s rendered in a communications platform, one can imagine plenty more opportunities for such technology to bring people together—which is what the holidays are all about.

Feeling festive?

Make Miracles Happen

If seeing is believing, then technology can really make holiday dreams come true for your audience—even if they’re not human. Noticing that dogs might feel left out of the holiday festivities by their bipedal family members, gourmet dogfood brand Cesar felt they should be put in charge of a time-honored holiday tradition: designing Christmas sweaters. Fashion design is a bit difficult when you have paws, so Cesar needed a design studio that would help the dogs realize their creative potential to the delight of their masters.

This resulted in a highly advanced yet whimsical scientific lab that’s part Willy Wonka factory, part Santa’s workshop and part scene from The Jetsons. Divided into stations that translate dogs’ everyday actions into design elements, the lab uses imaginative technology that’s also reminiscent of a dog show. “We had to find really simple things that dogs can do that would translate to the design process” said Hopkinson. “How could we make those simple things more fun to watch?” While the dogs are the stars, the technology really does have a presence in the film—it’s tough to determine whether the dogs or the robot are cuter—but thanks to a dynamic, fun design and stylish Christmas elements, the lab never feels sterile.

This is because while the inspiration of the studio was a science lab, vibrant colors and dynamic shapes were used to evoke the sense of fun you’d find in a playground. Instant visual feedback was also baked into the design so the technological aspect would remain fun and not abstract.

“The key thing Cesar wanted us to do is make everything real,” said Hopkinson, highlighting how Cesar’s doggy design studio isn’t just movie magic. In fact, skeptical viewers can watch it all come to life in a behind-the-scenes video augmenting the campaign. “It’s really interesting to see how this came about in reality rather than just the final product. You can see how this stuff truly worked.”

Using tech within your holiday campaigns is all about making the impossible possible and translating imagination to reality. By providing more immersive experiences through tech, you go a long way in impressing your audience and making their holiday wishes come true.

It’s clear that big data is valuable, but there’s so much of it—often siloed and locked away—that marketers and agencies alike can have a tough time measuring performance. A more integrated approach between data and creative is increasingly important with the rise in programmatic spending, so how can businesses keep up?

From departmental silos to media companies that refuse to share data due to strong privacy regulations and public scrutiny, measuring performance and tracking which media spend offers the best results are common thorns in marketers’ side. And when businesses are unable to measure data with efficiency, consumers are deprived of the personalized, relevant experiences they come to expect when handing over all that data.

The problem gets even more difficult with the rise of new players and platforms entering the arena. As the adoption of voice platforms like Amazon’s Alexa grows, for example, marketers will find themselves more beholden to platforms that might make data-crunching an even bigger challenge in addition to social and traditional search. Some of the biggest players are also the most resistant in sharing user data, facing pressure from regulators and the public to use it responsibly. But marketers need it to effectively inform their ad spend and create experiences optimized for each touchpoint on the consumer journey.

Programmatic’s Popularity Requires More Efficient Data

With programmatic ad delivery on the rise (41% of businesses are investing more in programmatic next year, and an additional 20% said they intend to invest significantly more, according to an Adweek Branded report), efficient access to data for measuring the performance of content becomes all the more important. But where there’s a challenge, there’s opportunity: MediaMonks CEO Victor Knaap believes the programmatic trend will prompt businesses to better integrate data into their creative process. “Programmatic is put into the outer areas of tech, start-ups and media buyers,” says Knaap, “but it is actually a canvas for delivering better creative.”

When data is built into the creative process early on, you can build much more personalized content optimized for the context of the platform. One elegant example is the U.S. Air Force website, which draws on user data to deliver dynamic, targeted content for a more relevant user experience. The U.S. Air Force needed such a data-driven approach because queries in the recruitment process ate up time and money. By tending to prospects’ needs and concerns through the content, they could better identify the most qualified applicants. And that’s important to note: the point of the website revamp wasn’t to generate more recruits, but rather more qualified ones. This heightened the need for highly accurate and actionable data.

First-Party Data to the Rescue

To achieve these goals, brands are hoping to leverage first-party data by investing in data management tools or offering platforms of their own. The U.S. Air Force website again serves as a great example of how brands can offer their own platform to meet these needs. Visitors begin their journey by providing key details like who they are, their work experience and what they hope to gain from a career with the force. This provides a starting point to surface up content that will grow more relevant as they browse.

Customer data platforms are useful, but it can be tough to choose the one that best fits your overall strategy or brand needs: according to the Adweek report, martech vendors have risen from a paltry 250 to about 7,000 over the past six years. Those equipped to provide a more integrated approach with marketers’ creative efforts and planning will undoubtedly prove the most attractive partners.

Aligning data with creative requires a flexible design. Once more, let’s look at how the U.S. Air Force website does it: by tracking users’ paths through the content, the front-end dynamically adapts to produce content on-the-fly. Variables in content include the images displayed, content headlines as well as the body copy itself. Suggested content for continued reading ensures users will never run out of content—and every time they click to read something else, they’re helping to train the website to identify the content they’re most interested in.

This AI-enhanced approach to A/B testing resulted in a 60% increase in conversion rates and 35% increase in higher-quality applications. While this technology is relatively advanced, any business can benefit from identifying opportunities to design with a modular, more flexible approach.

Creative is the crux where marketing and business interests meet the interests of consumers. It’s essential, then, that the marketing message is designed from the ground up to best fit the platform it’s delivered on. This makes it all the more important to adopt a performance-driven approach to creative that recognizes the context in which users interact with them.

With an ever-quickening rate of technological change and new platforms emerging just as fast, it can be tough for businesses to adapt. Rather than reinvent the wheel, legacy businesses should strive to be themselves.

When it comes to digital transformation, legacy businesses are in a uniquely tight spot: they must consider how to provide new, innovative experiences while retaining the character, image and customer relationship that have worked so well thus far. In some cases, rigid brand standards and internal reluctance to change can squander customers’ relationship with even beloved brands. So how does one invest in digital transformation without losing what made them unique and successful? 

Take stock of customers’ needs and how you can meet them.

The first step in adopting a digital strategy is to keep a customer-centric focus. How can digital platforms add value for them on top of your existing IP and products? Which of your customers’ needs are unmet given the channels that are available to you today? In addition to focusing on customer habits and needs, you should keep an eye on competition for inspiration, benchmarks and to see where possibilities lie. Are there any ways you can provide an even better experience than them?

When envisioning the experience that you want to give customers, avoid a common pitfall that befalls some brands: the dubious assumption that digital transformation solely involves a flashy site or app. In fact, digital transformation is a multifaceted process that will require you to restructure the way you do business. So rather than just invest in a new website or app experience, you’ll need a much more integrated approach to how your core message is amplified across several touchpoints, media and other messaging. This also means restructuring your team a bit. One example of changes you might implement includes marrying your marketing and IT teams to ensure a smoother user experience on the web.

Use your stature to your advantage—but don’t be afraid of change.

Old habits die hard, but legacy businesses have one advantage over newer ones: decades of cultural relevance and consumer trust that they can draw upon when asserting themselves in a digital space. Take, for example, one of the most iconic toy brands of all time: LEGO. When children’s attention shifted from physical toys to smartphones and iPads, LEGO wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The big, bad wolf of digital media failed to huff, puff and blow the LEGO-brick house down. Instead, the Danish toymaker chose to follow the wind and invest heavily in apps, videogames and film. The digital transformation effort has proved so successful that it’s today regarded as the “Apple of toys.”

Niels B. Christiansen, LEGO CEO, mentioned in the LEGO Play Well Report 2018 that “today’s children are seamlessly merging what’s real and what’s virtual, reinventing play in ways people of my own generation could never have envisioned.” This inspired the brand to similarly blur the lines between physical and digital experiences. “We at LEGO are embracing that fluidity in play,” added LEGO CMO Julia Goldin, “and we want to have a bigger role in a child’s development” both online and off.

LEGO’s sophistication in digital platforms culminated in Nexo Knights, a toy franchise designed to hold children’s attention across an entire ecosystem of experiences and media including a TV series, a mobile app, retail VR experiences and a web game. The robust campaign introduced children to the world of the toy series—but even with the bells and whistles of a VR game and mobile app, the focus was still on the boxes of brightly colored, plastic bricks that kids could dive their fists into.

Some things simply aren’t replicated digitally, according to Sander van der Vegte, Head of Labs at MediaMonks Labs. “From the feeling of the bricks to the sound of them clicking together,” there are many physical elements to the beloved brick toy that would make it impossible to replace the physical aspect of play. The big question to consider with digital transformation is how digital can augment the experience or thing that people already love about your brand.

See how we pieced together the Nexo Knights launch brick-by-brick.

Don’t cling to legacy business models, but enhance them in a smart way.

Clinging to a legacy business model can be suicide amidst changing consumer habits. Companies that are early in the digital transformation process can prioritize tools, platforms and features that fit within their existing business model rather than try to reinvent the wheel or deny the changing tide of customer needs.

One aspect of the Nexo Knights campaign that shouldn’t be overlooked is that it invites customers to visit and explore LEGO retail stores in a couple of different ways—despite the fact that most toy sales are happening online rather than off. What sounds like a bad idea has proven fruitful for the brand. A keystone of the campaign is the Nexo Knights VR experience, which lets customers literally step into the IP’s world as soon as they walk through the doors of a LEGO store. After they became acquainted with the product, children were able to find power ups at stores that they could scan into the Nexo Knights app, enhancing their digital experience with in-store visits. With both assets, the brand leveraged digital tech to enhance brick-and-mortar retail and to encourage kids to see the products in-person. Who said retail was dead?

Digital transformation can certainly be intimidating—it forces you to take a long, hard look at the way you form relationships with customers and can even cannibalize your product. But adopting a digital strategy doesn’t have to result in an identity crisis. Sometimes the best strategy is to be yourself.