Coca-Cola’s “The World Needs More Santas” Tops Ranking of the Most Effective Christmas Ads

Coca-Cola’s “The World Needs More Santas” tops the list of the most effective Christmas ads of 2023. That’s according to creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, which today (November 14th, 2023) launched a ranking of the festive campaigns most likely to have the biggest impact on the hearts, minds, and wallets of Xmas shoppers this festive season.

Coke’s ad, which features a city of Santas performing acts of kindness, sits proudly on top of the chart after managing a creative effectiveness score (CES) of 7.61 out of 10 – a composite metric which combines the three main drivers of effectiveness: attention, emotions, and memory. 

Coke’s ad gained top spot after eliciting an intense positive emotional response from 72.5% of the people who watched it – the second strongest reaction of any of the festive campaigns launched so far. It also generated the third highest attention levels of any ad in the chart, while 82% of viewers could recall the brand correctly after watching the spot. 

That helped put it just ahead of LEGO’s “Holiday Hero” (7.55) and Boots’ “Give Joy” (7.27) in second and third respectively. Spots from Duracell (4th), Shelter, and John Lewis (joint 5th) make up the rest of the festive top 5. 

Other brands to feature in DAIVID’s top 10 include M&S Food (6th), Lidl (7th), Morrisons, and Amazon (joint 8th). Xmas campaigns from Aldi, Asda, Waitrose, Argos, Sainsbury’s, and M&S Clothing all missed out on top 10 places. 

Ads were evaluated using facial coding, eye tracking, and survey responses to determine which had the biggest emotional and business impact on viewers. Altogether, 3,600 respondents took part in the study, which analysed 24 Christmas campaigns.

Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of DAIVID, said: “Coke certainly brought the Christmas fizz with its ‘The World Needs Santa’ campaign, which generated one the strongest emotional reactions of any Xmas ad this year. But the spot did more than just pack an emotional punch. Like LEGO and Boots’ ads, which make up the rest of the top three, it grabbed people’s attention by trying something different from the usual festive fare and combined it with strong branding. 

“Other ads, such as Shelter, also did well, but missed out on the top three because of poor brand recall. With so many festive ads coming out at the same time, advertisers need to do everything they can to wrestle attention away from their competitors by doing something different and memorable.” 

To see the full chart, click here.