nurun lab christmas sprint

Brands and Christmas: Better Use Digital To Offer Uniqueness

Brands and Christmas: Better Use Digital To Offer Uniqueness As explored by the Nurun Lab

Quick Takeaway To build loyalty, brands should offer a unique way for consumers to nurture their existing re-lationship during the holiday season. Digital makes it possible.



Introduction The celebration of family and friends marks the holiday season, however in the past few decades, this ritual has been overwhelmed with gift giving. Ac-cording to the New Yorker, the Christ-mas shopping season can account for as much as 40 per cent of a retail store’s annual revenue and as much as three-quarters of its annual profit. Christmas enables people to assert relationships through things, which can be as excit-ing as it is stressful. As a gift is symbolic of the relationship that exists between the giver and the recipient, the focus should be on finding gifts that perfectly represent the relationship rather than what type of object is involved. The past 15 years of globalization has heightened this stress; with people get-ting richer, products getting cheaper and the mass production of stuff, it has become more difficult for the receiver and the gift-giver to get a clear idea of a gift’s true value. In fact, except for a few iconic brands (such as Apple and Nike), brand-name goods are becoming a less desirable option for those seeking an unforgettable gift ex-perience. At Nurun, we believe people are look-ing for ways to transform generic gifts into unique presents. Brands should take advantage of this opportunity by providing smart, af-

fordable ways to make their product(s) unique. Digital can accomplish this.

What makes the Christmas ritual special.

“It is not a matter of rationalizing why children like Father Christmas, but rather, why adults invented him in the first place.” – Claude Levi-Strauss, Father Christmas Executed (1952)

In an age of secularization and the de-cline of ritual, the winter holiday sea-son, championed by Christmas, has become the most promising candidate for the first global festival. The Christ-mas ritual can be traced to ‘pagan’ Rome, however similar celebrations were occurring in Scandanavia and among the South West American na-tives. These festivities of light over darkness or life over death during the winter months are not an exclusively Christian ritual; they materialized in many cultures through gift exchanges, solidarity between the rich and poor and feasting. Since the end of World War II the im-portance of festive decorations, cele-bratory meals, travelling, and in par-ticular gift giving, has increased (in conjunction with the general rise in living standards) to such an extent that all of these activities have become an essential part in asserting, forming and

Better safe than sorry: 39% of peo-ple hope for money & gift cards for Xmas

This sign indicates an insight, a concept or a prototype imagined by the nurun Lab based on research.


insuring relation-ships in Christian and non-Christian countries alike. For exam-ple, in China, young people cele-brate Christmas by sending each other gifts such as ‘holy apples’ that cost up to five times more than the average fruit. (1) “Yes, I do like see-ing them happy. But the event itself is sort of secondary to being able to

travel with my girlfriends. I mean I love my kids, and everything… but Christmas is a build up of music, travel, shopping, drinking, thinking about what you really value.” Lesley, 39, interviewed at Macy’s. “For me Church, like Christmas, is a feeling of love and connectedness. I feel inspired by the feeling all around me... everyone is in a good mood, smiling and singing. We are with our children amidst Jesus. It’s nice.” Maria, 36.

Choosing the right gift is a source of stress proportional to the love and joy of the offering and the nature of the relation-ship.

Unlike a simple object, a gift is a tangi-ble representation of a unique relation-ship that exists between people. The gift in itself is secondary to how “unique, specified by the people ex-changing and the unique moment of the exchange” (2) it is. In other words, Christmas is an occasion for people to assert relationships through things, whether it’s their mother or coworkers.

“He [my husband]’s funny. I’m the one sewing bad scarves and drinking Egg Nog while he’s out at The Bay getting our family PR together .” Jennifer, 29.

This process is as exciting as it is stress-ful.

“I don’t get Barbies or Bratz… Christ-mas is probably the real first reflec-tion of the values you want your chil-dren to have about sharing, loving and generosity… So I get books, and shoes, mini kitchen appliances. It’s pressure, but it’s worth it,” Delphine, 35.

Sometimes it places such pressure on people that they discharge themselves of the responsibility entirely. Louise, 57, owns a public relations firm with her husband, and while she identifies Christmas “as an opportunity to be in touch [with old or potential clients] without sounding needy or creepy,” she and her husband have stopped shop-ping for themselves and their children for Christmas:

“Progressively, with my husband,

A visualization of the correlation between Christmas and stress based on words used in

Pressure, Depression around Xmas time It’s a common and popular belief that the depression rates rise around Christmas time with peo-ple feeling excluded from the merry spirit of the season. Even if this is statistically untrue, the pressure of the alleged happy moment can be daunting for some, magnifying the feeling of loneliness or even triggering some radical measures. Monito-ring the frequency of "break up","broken up" and relationship status changes on Facebook, a study revealed the Holiday season as the year's second highest break-up period. The Holiday season is the most intense and emotionally loaded period of the year.


we’ve realized that we’re never en-tirely satisfied with our gifts, so we stopped giving each other gifts. Some-times we’ll get our kids gifts, but more often it’s just a money transac-tion. It sounds a little blasé, but I don’t care about gifts. The music makes me nauseous and really if I want a computer I’ll just go on the 27th or whatever.”

It is socially accepted that a gift’s main role is to demonstrate how much you care for someone. Every relation you have, whether to a spouse, child, parent or friend requires a gift that is unique to that specific relationship. Making

the wrong choice translates to “He/she is going to believe I don’t love him/her that much.” With an over-abundance of goods available, the stress of selecting the right one can be overwhelming.

Consumers invent strategies to lower the pressure by offering money or gift cards, by choosing expensive gifts, or by relying on iconic brands and trendy items. This year, iPads and tablets are the most desired gifts, followed by clothing.(3) Other consumers are opting for more unique gifts, by personalizing standard items. Consumer brands want to make their products highly val-ued (difficult), become an iconic brand (very difficult) or focus on uniqueness (probably easier, especially during Christmas time). Brands and retailers try to imagine digital solutions to ad-dress this situation. Retailers try to provide useful tips and tools such as gift idea generators. Un-fortunately these digital tools hardly prove to be efficient, nor relevant enough to help consumers. Walmart’s latest app, Shopycat, searches a friend’s Facebook profile and generates recommendations based on what has been liked and posted on their wall.(4) Although objective in its recom-mendations – it suggests products from other retails including, Barnes & Noble,

An idea from the Lab to remind to customers that losing or forgetting a gift cards is like losing real money.

An idea from the Lab to make digital gift choosers more accurate by anonymously validating ideas with the gift receiver .


RedEnvelope, ThinkGeek, Hot Topic – it fails to take into account the meaning of gifting (making efforts to demon-strate love) and the proximity of the relationship that exists between the giver and recipient. The gift becomes a fluke. Another interesting initiative in the same vein is the I am Saint Nick tool that gets Santa to call your friends and family, asking for their wish list.(5) Once the conversation is over, a recording is sent to you. Even though the call is anonymous and the information gath-ered increases the chances of getting a gift that pleases, the gift may still fail to represent the meaningfulness of the relationship between the giver and the recipient. For close relatives, such a tool could be perceived to be deceptive as it clearly reveals a lack of personal

interest, however, for broader circles of acquaintances, it could be tolerated. Making the gift unique is a customer’s strategy that smart brands should embrace rather than fight. In the sea of potential consumer goods coming from all over the world, there is a decline in local artisanal labour and an increase in Do-It-Yourself (DIY). Far from the grandmother scarves and chil-dren drawings, today’s DIY culture de-mands time, financial resources and taste, all of which are appropriated by the dominant class. The result of this endeavour is the prized unique gift. Based on a want for custom products, consumers have developed methods to meet their desired level of uniqueness. Rare, existing objects are widely per-ceived as being unique due to their lim-ited availability. This can also be achieved by giving customized items, edited selections (playlists, wine), self-created content and objects (photo al-bums).

“I think Theo needs to know what’s up and that good things don’t come in packages they come in things like Malva pudding and happy families.” Jennifer, 28.

The relationship between face value, uniqueness and perceived value is something difficult to define quantifia-bly. But from our interviews it was clear that a “cheap" gift can be perceived to be of great value if it is selected with an

The perceived value of a cheaper iPad preloaded with selected content can be the same as the perceived value of a more expensive one.


intention and in a unique manner. There are different ways to make a gift unique, and the Lab built a working grid to put brands in creative condi-tions for them to imagine their best fit.

Ideas in practice

Some brands have capitalized on this occurrence and developed platforms to create unique customized products. Mass production has enabled anyone to get almost anything, and because of this, finding one-of-a-kind gifts has be-come a key-differentiating factor when giving a present. Digital tools can allow products to be customized with a minor tweak, turn-ing any gift – from mainstream to high-end – into a unique present. That way, even the value of high-end products

can be raised from luxury to priceless. For instance, luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton My Monogram offer cus-tomizable products to help gifters cre-ate uniqueness.(6) The whole range of products can be adapted to this business model. In the apparel business, high-end brands such as Burberry could offer platforms to customize trench coats, while in the lower-end this shift has already taken place with Zazzle.de, a t-shirt customi-zation platform that proudly an-nounced 12 million unique visitors and a total of 11 million items shipped in November 2011. (7) Some unique prod-ucts can also uphold treasurable memories. Books are interesting objects in this regard. “The book of the reasons why I love you” is a professional look-ing book with personalized content perfect for a significant other.(8) For a child, his or her teddy bear can be up-loaded and made into the book’s pro-tagonist.(9) For less personal, intimate gifts, cus-tomization can enhance presents to create a long lasting memory. For an edible, short lasting and jovial product, my M&Ms allows people to buy M&Ms for different occasions (Christmas, birthdays, etc.) with customized pic-tures, personal messages or even fa-vourite NFL teams.(10) In the same vein, Alchemist Dreams has launched the world’s first custom liqueurs that users can customize from taste to the bottle’s design.(11)

The unique gift grid explores patterns to extend traditional approaches to digital


Prototyping uniqueness We chose two categories, banking and apparel, to imagine how brands could help their customers make unique gifts for Christmas. For the apparel brand, we came up with a simple concept: using embroidered QR codes to attach unique video mes-sages to a shirt. Such an idea could work both online and in store. We be-lieve the marriage of the old craft of embroidering with new technology like QR codes would satisfy the customer’s need for uniqueness.

We tried to figure out how a bank – that is definitely not at the top of any-one’s mind when it comes to finding a gift - could become an appealing alter-native to traditional children’s Christ-mas presents. We believe offering a bank-related gift can be part of the “Finding rare things” category we ob-

served for Christmas gifting. To make it happen, we developed a concept based on both the materialization and virtual-ization of money. Using a connected and real piggy bank, kids could ex-change the “real money” (like bank notes, cheques or gift cards) they get for Christmas against tokens that rep-resent virtual money to be put inside the bank. The fake coins put in would then pile up in an interface displaying the money saved in real time and fea-turing the kid’s personal wishlist. Cor-respondence between the amount cu-mulated and real world objects would help kids realize what their money is worth based on their own objectives (a bike, a PlayStation, etc.).

Conclusion It is clear from the Lab’s ethnographic research and authoritative resources in the field that Christmas is a source of stress for several reasons, including the selection of the perfect gift. Brands can help consumers make gifts more unique by converting patterns that exist in the real world into digital solutions.


References (1) Euromonitor International survey, Nov. 29th 2011 (2) Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Politi-cal Economy of the Sign. 64-65. Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis, MO: Telos, 1981 (3)Consumer Electronics Association’s 18th Annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns Study released in October 2011 (4)http://allthingsd.com/20111130/dont-trust-your-instincts-wal-mart-uses-algorithms-to-find-gifts-people-want/ (5)http://www.springwise.com/telecom_mobile/santa_calls_friends_and_family/ (6)http://www.webandluxe.com/01/2010/marketing-mon-monogramme-la-personnalisation-made-in-louis-vuitton/ (7)http://mass-customization.blogs.com/mass_customization_open_i/clothing/ (8)http://www.lovebookonline.com/ (9)http://www.springwise.com/media_publishing/mondoudou/ http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/talkatoo/ (10)http://www.mymms.com/ (11)http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/world%E2%80%99s-customizable-liqueurs-handmade-order/

Disclaimer About the references used in this Nu-run Lab document: a link to an external site does not imply an endorsement of the views, information or products pro-vided or held by such websites. References to brands in this Nurun Lab document are only provided as poten-tial applicable domains both for the convenience of readers and crashtest theoretical ideas with real-life situa-tions.

A point of view developed by the nurun Lab

The nurun Lab team gathers anthropolo-gists, design thinking experts, strategic planners and new technologies experts.


Appendix APPENDIX 1: TWITTER CANVAS At the Lab, we gather meaningful tweets to detect patterns on a subject, a category or a brand. Tweets are a gold mine for marketers: people express frustrations and desires without being asked to do so. This canvas demonstrates the commuters’ problems and search for solutions. APPENDIX 2: CHRISTMAS IN BLOGS AND FORUMS WORD CLOUDS APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEWS APPENDIX 4: PRROTOTYPES DESCRIPTIONS


In the blogs and forums, the words associated to Christmas and Stress are not very differ-ent from the words associated to Christmas and Joy.

Methodology: wordcloud made with a mix the 100 first results in Google of the requested words in blogs and forums.

The Christmas Stress wordcloud

The Christmas Joy wordcloud


Interviews For this sprint the Lab did fieldwork in Macy's Canadian Tire, malls and interviewed five women with children to hear about their rela-tionship to the celebrations (consumption, gen-der, religion), etc.. Here are some of the most interesting quotes from our five informants. - Christmas is about DIY LOVE : Food, Tradi-tion, and Gender equality Jennifer, 28 met at home with three year old daughter Theo “For Christmas, I go back to Kitchener Ontario to my parents, and enter this blissful ageless few days.” “I’m originally South African so my dad bakes Malva pudding. It’s funny because growing up Christmas meant summer and swimming. Now it's all cold out… but I guess it’s still warm in-side. When I’m home it’s like my mom can be Theo’s mom and I can be happy doing nothing.” “My dad is actually a real Christmas dad. He goes to get the tree on like December 1st, puts this train in the living room and gets excited making Egg Nog. He’s not the best gift giver, and generally never gets me perfectly but he cares so much to make us happy too..." "Aaron [husband] isn’t a Christmas dad. He’s loving but makes Christmas into this responsi-ble thing. Where he’ll make a categories list with like the level each person he knows qualifies for: card, chocolates,… he’s funny. I’m the one sow-ing bad scarves and drinking egg nog while he’s out at the Bay getting our Family PR together.” “I don’t particularly care for consumption. I would much rather Theo getting a hand sowed doll than a Barbie. I mean it’s not even a ques-tion about being cheap … It’s really like I think Theo needs to know what’s up and that good things don’t come in packages they come in things like Malva pudding and happy families.” “We have a tradition with Aaron, to get our friends together. It’s a brunch and we provide food and games for the kids and people bring

booze. This year actually Theo’s cat broke her femur and a herniated which ridiculously blows but the point is we called the brunch ‘Help Boots walk again Brunch’ so we can pay for her meds.” - Christmas is about Community : Sharing, Smaller means, and Religion Maria, 36 met her husband's business home (he's a genitor), they have three boys 14, 10, and 8 years old. “In the Bible Christmas is about sharing and being good. Today, here, it’s all about buying. So at church it’s still more like where we’re from; about being together that night, eating together with the community. We work hard on our na-tivity scene… It feels nice that that still exists.” “In fact Christmas isn’t really when we get our gifts it's later when the Kings arrive early Janu-ary. I think the boys at first didn’t like it – but know they do because it’s sort of like Christmas is the meal and the community and two weeks later it’s the presents and the parents.” “Right now my boys all want this game so after a long family decision last week we decided that they would all get it, and have to share it. I think (the eldest) isn’t happy – and I can understand but he gets a raise in his allowance so we’ll see. You know generally people forget their gifts anyways. Whereas if it’s something they can use together its better.” “For me Church like Christmas is a feeling of love and connectedness. I feel inspired by the feeling all around me... everyone is in a good mood, smiling and singing. We are with our children amidst Jesus. It’s nice.” Maria, 36 - Christmas is about Partying for a month: Macy's, Girlfriends, fun and Consumption Les-ley, 39 met in Macy’s from Ohio with 3 girl-friends (come every year since they have been 21) she has a 12 and a 9 year old. “My youngest loves superhero stuff. If you’re a ten year old, Wolverine from Xman is like the hottest thing on the planet right now.”


“Kids basically like whatever they see on TV.” “Well now that they [her children] are older I can’t really use the be good or else line. They’re just greedy... I mean yes, I do like seeing them happy. But the event itself is sort of secondary to being able to travel with my girlfriends. I mean I love my kids, and everything… but Christmas is a build-up of music, travel, shopping, drinking, thinking about what you really value.” “But you know here, I’m also shopping for my-self. I don’t want a present I have no interest in.” - Christmas is about the values you want your kids to have: Balance, Generosity and Consump-tion Delphine, 35, at home with her 2 year old boy and 6 year old girl “We come from France, and ‘la belle famille’ isn’t always easy. I’ve lost my mom and I think mothers play an important role in holding the ritual together – so since she’s gone we only have my husband’s side of the family and it’s just a little more difficult. We went back a few times when we just moved here 6 years ago. But now we only go back in the summer. It’s easier that way. So for Christmas it’s just me, my husband and out 2 children.” “I love seeing my kids happy. There’s a real joy in their eyes. And as a parent that’s really impor-tant.” “I think it’s about reliving what my mother lived. I know it’s cheesy but it’s important. And I’m really bad at not getting way too many things for my kids. I don’t get Barbies or Bratz … Christ-mas is probably the real first reflection of the values you want your children to have about sharing, loving and generosity… So I get books, and shoes, mini kitchen appliances” - Christmas is about being alone with family: Work Relations, Food and Close Ones Louise, 57 met at her office has a 25 girl (living in mtl) and a 29 (living in nyc) boy kids. “I don’t really care about Christmas’ religious aspect. I like to have my kids home. I see my

daughter a lot, but my boy is further so having everyone come to the country is nice. I bake the food. Christmas is about food after all… Pro-gressively with my husband we’ve realized that we we’re never entirely satisfied with our gifts, so we stopped giving each other gifts. Some-times we’ll get our kids gifts but more often its just a money transaction.” “It sounds a little blasé but I don’t care about gifts. The music makes me nauseous and really if I want a computer I’ll just go on the 27th or whatever.” “I’ll give to the Kid’s hospital every year.” “My husband and I have a PR firm so we need to send out letters for the New Year’s. It’s part of what we do. In a way it keeps us in contact with clients. Often we get calls back. In a sense it’s an opportunity to be in touch without sounding needy or creepy.”

nurun lab christmas sprint

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