Festival Farm
The digital commercial I’m showing is a video ad from TK Maxx named Festival Farm released at Christmas 2023. This commercial tells a warm and funny story.
Background
TK Maxx is a subsidiary of TJX Companies (TJ Maxx in the United States), an American clothing and home furnishings company. The stores are located in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Austria and Netherlands, with a total of 629 stores in Europe. The chain uses a slightly different name from that of the TJ Maxx stores in the United States, to avoid confusion with the British retailer T. J. Hughes.
How to be Shareable
I took Social Media & The Brand class by Professor Tombrakos during J-term 2024. In the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger, which we were required to read for that class, the author uses STEPPS as a summary to explain how to make things popular.
They are the 6 key steps to creating contagious content that explains what motivates people to want to share. The six concepts are: social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories.
S: Social Currency. The content of communication is a social currency rich in circulation value. The first thing we should do is discover the salience of your product, the second is to utilize game mechanics, and the last is to make people feel like we’re insiders.
T: Triggers. People will talk about what happens to come to mind. Make your content relate to things in people’s lives. This way people will be triggered to talk about your content in their conversations.
E: Emotion. Capture people’s emotions and inspire empathy so that people develop a desire to share and comment.
P: Public. People will only imitate and spread what they see. Publicity is the basis of madness.
P: Practical Value. People prefer something that sounds practical. We should package our content to look practical so that people will be happy to share it.
S: Stories. Conveying content in a storytelling way will make it easier for people to get immersed.
From my point of view, this video commercial is a shareable one. I will use the “STEPPS” mentioned above to explain.
First, this advertisement has great storytelling. When the hit single “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” of the early 1990s plays, a series of animals strut through and show off their Christmas presents. As new jumpers, hats, scarves, bags and slippers are modelled by the animals, the farmer asks his wife “did you buy all the farm designer outfits?” When she confirms she did, he says “I thought we were keeping it small with the gifts this year”, to which she responds “oh, I did love”. Every character is happy and gratified in this story. It is a good story that combines fantasy, harmony, humor, and the warmth of family.
On top of that, this commercial shows practical value of TK Maxx. Different shapes of animals are featured in this video. Different animals represent different types of people. Jenny, the farm hostess in the video, got well-fitting and beautiful gifts for each of the animals. TK Maxx implies that consumers can pick up a suitable gift for anyone in their store, even animals. Moreover, near the end of the video TK Maxx attaches their tagline, “spoil all your loved ones for less”. They want to let the audience know that at TK Maxx it is possible to spend less on a gift that will please everyone.
Lastly, their ads tug at the emotions of the viewer. Christmas is the most grand festival each year. The entire video ad is filled with Christmas elements. The overwhelming snow, decorated light globes, and furry animals. All of these elements working together to create an atmosphere that can stir up a sense of holiday in the viewer.
