The holidays are here, bringing with them the requisite Christmas carols, Starbucks gift cards, absent colleagues, and companies using online video to thank their customers for another great year. We’ve rounded up a few from the tech world and beyond to help you match our festive mood.
If there was a theme to 2016 – besides the twin failures of democracy that were Brexit and Donald Trump’s improbable win, the depressing number of celebrity deaths, and a general sense that the year itself needed a hard reset – it was the number of high-profile security breaches and email leaks, a trend that Toronto-based digital consulting firm Delvinia manages to make light of in their holiday video, “Adam, Steve & Raj Read Leaked Emails” – which, they’re quick to note, doesn’t actually feature any leaked emails.
Calgary-based WestJet Airlines Ltd.’s “Christmas Miracle” campaign has become an annual viral video tradition, and this year’s, which turned the “Snowflake Soiree” organized by the company for the displaced residents of Fort McMurray into a heartwarming holiday tale, complete with Seussian narration and a tear-jerking ending, was no exception – as of this writing it has more than 1.3 million views.
U.K.-based accounting software firm Sage Group plc, meanwhile, used music to tell the story of a small business owner (and Sage customer, naturally) coming home to a Christmas surprise.
Then there’s Apple Inc.’s holiday video, which directly addresses the anti-immigration sentiment that drove much of Brexit and Donald Trump’s success by showing how a group of (mainly white) townspeople react when Frankenstein’s monster decides to leave his hideaway for the day.
H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB is neither Canadian nor a tech brand, but we’re posting their video, “Come Together,” anyway because we like writer/director Wes Anderson and actor Adrian Brody, and appreciate the company letting them essentially make a largely product-placement-free (except for the train’s “H&M Line” branding, and the clothing, which H&M presumably supplied) holiday short.
And since U.K. department store chain John Lewis sells electronics in addition to trampolines, beauty products, and clothing, we suppose we can justify posting their well-animated holiday offering as well.
(Apparently the company’s “holiday adverts” are something of an annual tradition in the U.K. As of this writing, Buster the boxer’s debut has close to 24 million views.)
But we’ll be honest – our favourite holiday video comes from the self-proclaimed “advocate marketing experts” at Toronto B2B marketing software firm Influitive, whose team managed to record 100 personalized videos like this one, ordered by editorial director Brian Jackson (who – full disclosure – is engaged to an Influitive employee) in a single day.
And now it’s time for ITWC headquarters to shut down for the remainder of the season, and for us here at ITBusiness.ca to thank you for reading and wish you a very happy holiday, from our office to yours. You can still expect two more weekly videos – today and on Dec. 30 – but otherwise we’ll be staying far away from tech industry updates until Jan. 3, when we’ll return with our first new content of 2017. See you next year!