Last year, Santa stopped by and asked us to be his personal marketing team.

This year, the idea for our campaign came from a familiar piece of pop culture: the old “Now That’s What I Call Music” compilation CDs.

That concept became “That’s What I Call Coal for Christmas”, a parody holiday album that we turned into this year’s holiday card. 

Our “album” included these soon-to-be holiday classics:

• This Could’ve Been an Email
• Update Your Homepage
• Quiet on Set
• The Twelve Rounds of Edits
• We Wish You’d Get Coal for Christmas

Each song runs about 20–30 seconds and was written, performed, and recorded entirely by our team.

And that part is important to us.

None of these songs was made using AI. Every track was created the same way music always has been: by people collaborating, experimenting, and having fun with the process.

So, what’s our secret? 

Three members of our team are actively in bands and are incredibly talented musicians, so they naturally spearheaded the project. But they weren’t the only voices involved. Samantha and Mia both contributed solo performances, adding their own energy and personality to the tracks.

Like most of our internal projects, this wasn’t about perfection or polish. It was about making something original, together, and letting everyone contribute where they felt most comfortable.

As we close out the year, we want to say thank you.

Thank you for watching our holiday campaign.

Thank you for supporting our work.

Thank you for being part of the year we just wrapped up.

Happy holidays, and here’s to the new year ahead.

The post Behind the Scenes of Our 2025 Holiday Campaign first appeared on Coal Creative.

From an original video to a physical billboard and a blog detailing our collaborative process, the fruits of our labor speak for themselves. So, despite how charming the campaign was (if we do say so ourselves), we’re not here to discuss the finer details of our artistic vision. Instead, we’re talking about the results it generated.

The season of giving may be over, but we’ve got one last present for you: a flurry of facts and figures detailing the success of our holiday advertising blast. 

What Coal Set Out to Do

We weren’t only trying to wish everyone well and tell a compelling story with our holiday campaign. We also had three primary goals:

• Team Building – Everyone at Coal worked hand-in-hand to bring our holiday video, blog, and other deliverables to life—the exact spirit of collaboration we hoped for when we kicked off our campaign. 

• Brand Awareness — We wanted our campaign to stay in viewers’ minds—and, like Christmas dinner leftovers, it stuck around well into the new year. Our clients are still mentioning it whenever we chat (even though we have no power to guarantee them a spot on the Nice List).

• Tangible Outcomes – We gave and gave this holiday season and only asked for one small gift in return: increased engagement, especially in terms of email leads. We’re happy to report that Santa delivered us a sackful of new friends to work with in 2025.

From our website to our social pages, our engagement dreams came true this holiday season, and we’re resolved to act on our blessings in the new year.

Coal’s Website Traffic Soared to New Heights

In general, we get a fairly consistent stream of friends, collaborators, and interested brands browsing our site from day to day. During December, however, our page experienced notable spikes in fanfare whenever we released another piece of holiday campaign content. 

Traffic was also far more consistent this year than in December 2023, when we only received one large spike at the end of the month. We know 2024’s seasonal visitors came for the campaign because our holiday landing page was the second most viewed portion of our site in December. 

Our visitors spent more time on-site as well—over 40% more time in comparison to December of 2023. But, most importantly, they engaged with us. Our contact form was utilized nearly 46% more than during our last campaign—meaning more collaborators to get to know in the coming months!

Coal’s Social Pages Reached More Users Than Ever

Website traffic is a telling indicator of engagement, but not everyone makes the leap from our socials to our own site. That’s why we kept an extra close eye on our social media analytics as well—and they certainly didn’t disappoint! 

On Facebook, for instance, we:

• Increased our total reach by 163.7% in comparison to November of 2024
• Netted 52.3% more views than the previous month
• Bumped our total reach up by 152.5% over December of 2023

Evidently, our campaign delivered the exact engagement we were looking for. And Facebook wasn’t the only platform to see a noticeable spike in reach and viewership. In just one day, we enhanced our LinkedIn engagement by a whopping 60%!

The most impressive part of it all, however, is the kind of audience our campaign attracted. About 72% of our holiday video’s views came from non-followers—meaning the campaign successfully completed its job of drawing potential new collaborators into the Coal family. 

What’s more, viewers both new and established had plenty to say about our video and campaign. Check out a few of the standout comments we received on our social media pages:

Coal’s Email Engagement was Exceptionally Enhanced

Email leads were one of our main motivators for this campaign, and we certainly noticed an improvement in how our collaborators received our digital messages. Firstly, our open rate shot up to nearly 30%, but those readers didn’t just read our emails—they also took them to heart.

During December, our email Click-Through Rate (CTR) was nearly double the industry average of 2.53%. 

We’re so excited about this wave of interest, and we’re riding it into the new year with a renewed sense of creativity and confidence to inspire our future campaigns. 

Coal’s Collaborators Tell the Story

Facts and figures present a telling narrative about our campaign’s success but, all in all, it’s still our friends’ opinions that matter the most. So, we’d like to close things off with some words from one of our collaborators, Gayle Fedder of JamLoop Connected Television (CTV) advertising:

“It was a perfect example of out-of-the-box creativity and innovative thinking. By leveraging multiple platforms, you didn’t just deliver a message—you showcased the true power of integrated marketing. This is exactly how an advertising agency can lead by example, demonstrating to other businesses how to connect, engage, and inspire. Your approach not only amplifies your own brand but also opens the door to exciting new business opportunities.”

If you’d like to connect, engage with, and inspire your clients with a unique creative campaign, Coal has the gifts to bring your vision to life. Don’t wait for Santa to deliver unparalleled advertising talent down your chimney: Request a proposal to begin working with Coal in 2025. 

The post One Last Gift Under the Tree: Recapping Coal Creative’s Holiday Campaign first appeared on Coal Creative.

Saint Nick has landed in NEPA, but, instead of packing presents, he brought his own wishlist of promotional deliverables for us to fulfill. From a campaign video that rivals classic holiday tales to a billboard that modernizes Santa’s services, we took our holiday hero’s marketing presence to heights his sleigh could only dream of reaching— all while showing our audience what it’s like to work with Coal Creative.

This is the story of the holiday miracle that brought this campaign to life. So, slip on your flannel jammies, grab a cup of hot cocoa (or iced coffee), and curl up next to a yuletide log—not a creature is stirring, but Coal’s hard-hitting promotional content certainly is!

An Idea is Born

Coal’s holiday card is usually a solo project undertaken by one of our skilled creators. But this year felt different. As Chief Creative Officer Samuel O’Connell put it, “It felt important to pull in the entire team to collaborate on an internal project. Something that gave everyone an opportunity to learn, grow, and experiment.”

Togetherness is the spirit of the season, after all!

To accomplish this, we would need to create a campaign within a campaign. First, we needed to create a fictional marketing campaign for Father Christmas himself. Then, we needed to create our own promotion to announce to the world that Coal Creative can handle anyone’s marketing needs — even Santa’s. 

When a routine Friday meeting turned into a seasonal brainstorming session, the idea for this promotional blitz burst forth into existence. We used a virtual whiteboard to plot out our resources, capabilities, and budgets before landing on ten key components of these campaigns:

• A video
• A teaser video
• A blog 
• Coal Creative’s Social media posts
• Landing pages for both Santa and Coal Creative
• An e-blast
• Our classic holiday card
• A billboard for Santa
• A newspaper ad

With our deliverables set, we split up into groups based on our core skills. Our entire team of tinkering elves—err, every single member of all of Coal’s different departments—came together to create this campaign, and we really feel it shows in the final results.

The Campaign Comes to Life

From the start, we knew Santa’s campaign had to strike the perfect balance between timeless holiday magic and modern-day relevance. As Lead Web Developer and Designer Matt Simoncavage put it, “We aimed for a look that balanced tradition with modern appeal—something timeless yet sleek, designed to resonate with today’s fast-paced, instant-gratification world.”
Enter our slogan: The original overnight shipper. It’s the perfect nod to Santa’s iconic delivery skills while giving him a contemporary edge. We carried this vibe over to his seasonal landing page, blending the sleek design of our revamped Coal Creative homepage with a few festive surprises—like “instant answers” to your marketing gift list. After all, even Santa appreciates a little extra sparkle to stay ahead of the game.

For our own campaign deliverables, we aimed for a classic and whimsical holiday look and feel. However, while the two campaigns needed to have their own distinct looks, they needed to live in the same universe, too. 

According to Matt, “While designing the campaign materials, I wanted to make sure all of the elements connected in some way to create the feeling of world-building. The holiday card we sent out has the same cover as the storybook Santa’s reading from in the video, and you can actually go to the website we built for Santa and fill out the form yourself. I think all of those little details make the whole thing feel more real.”

As all our creatives came together to work on the project, they shared ideas that would spread like holiday joy. Once the different aspects began to snowball and take shape, they started to inform each other. For instance, Campaign Manager Jesse Macko says, “The billboard and social media posts are deeply connected, but each serves a distinct purpose. The billboard is designed for quick impact, emphasizing the call to action. In contrast, the social media posts offer more room to engage and explore, giving users time to take in the details and connect with the visuals.”

All in all, however, the most involved and meaningful portion of the campaign is our promotional video—and it’s also where we let our Hallmark holiday spirit shine through.

Shooting Clips for Kris Kringle

We always planned for our holiday short to remind viewers of rhyming seasonal classics like The Night Before Christmas, but we didn’t realize just how much Video Director Alex Manganella would elevate the script. Everyone at Coal brainstormed together, but as our internally-elected comedy writer, he took the reins on the dialogue.

The results had us all rolling with laughter, and we knew we needed to shoot a trial run as soon as possible. So, we put our improv skills to the test: The cast of our first take featured whoever was available in the office that day, and we used whatever props we had on hand. 

After laying the groundwork for an exceptional final product, we ironed out a few other finer details, like:

• Hiring a Santa actor (the incredible Lou Lyons) to enhance the professionalism of the official clip

• Having our Web Developer, Technology Specialist, and Resident Composer Travis Antoniello create an original score in the style of, as he puts it, Grant Kirkhope, Danny Elfman, John Williams, and Koji Kondo

• Ensuring every member of Coal Creative had a role to play and got to show off their acting chops

Creating this pre-visualization test reel before filming ensured production ran smoothly. We watched it as a group before shooting any final scenes, so everyone knew what to expect and how everything should be timed out. This left us even more time for brainstorming, allowing us to tweak the design of the set (our office) and pitch additional improvised scenes to each other. The final shoot was some of the most fun we’ve had as a crew. If you’re a fan of Coal Creative’s past skits, this is the holiday present of a lifetime.

Coal Creative’s Marketing Magic is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Our holiday campaign has been shot, coded, illustrated, and shared with the world—but the seasonal fun is just getting started at Coal.

Just like our collaborators, we’ve been pretty nice this year—especially to the big man himself—and we hope Santa will bring us an extra special present this season: The chance to work with you.

We’ll be honest: This campaign isn’t just for Santa’s benefit. It’s also a call to potential collaborators to add Coal to their wishlist in 2025. As CEO Holly K. Pilcavage sums it up, “This campaign highlights the power of collaboration, showcasing how working together can bring creative ideas to life. By blending storytelling and humor, we’ve demonstrated our unique approach to marketing that balances fun with strategic insight. This campaign was also designed to highlight the full spectrum of our services, from digital to traditional marketing efforts.”

Put simply, we’ve got a bag of promotional skills as endless as Santa’s sack of surprises. This year, skip the gift cards and tube socks and get the one gift every brand truly wants for the holidays: Coal.

The post A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Holiday Campaign first appeared on Coal Creative.