Christmas is the most commercial season of the year and considering the increased media pressure and competitive landscape around the holiday season, it’s hard to truly stand out.

Our brief was to develop an original, global, social-first, dinner talk-worthy brand campaign that emotionally connected to Zalando’s consumers, generated brand fame, extended positivity, optimism and emotional engagement, and worked across the whole festive season.

Christmas 2020 was certain to be a holiday like none before, with millions of Europeans uncertain of being able to be together with their families.

We set out to bring the world a little closer during the holiday season by celebrating the ultimate expression of human connection through the one physical act we’ve missed most this year: hugging.

We launched our fully integrated, social-first global anthem film at the same time as Europe entered its second COVID lockdown with an emphatic message of hope: “We Will Hug Again”.

The film featured “Godspeed” by Frank Ocean, who used his music commercially for the first time ever.

After a year of separation, the 2020 festive season marked a time when positivity and emotional engagement were craved more than ever. It was our job to build love for Zalando and to extend positivity, optimism and emotional engagement at a time when (quite frankly), we’ve never needed it more.

Our PR strategy was therefore built around the insight on the power of human connection and we aimed to bring the feeling of a million virtual hugs across the entire European continent to drive positivity at Christmas. Our campaign message was simple but bold: “We Will Hug Again”.

To speak to our target audience of mainly Gen Z and Millennial customers, the campaign was an integrated one that cut across all major channels, from TV, OOH and social, to PR collaborations with influencers and celebrities alike.

With millions of Europeans uncertain of being able to be together with their families for the Christmas holidays, we set out to bring the world a little closer during the festive season by celebrating the ultimate expression of human connection through the one physical act we’ve missed most this year: hugging.

Our anthem film ran for six weeks and celebrated this universal gesture, delivering an emphatic message of hope: “We Will Hug Again”. We also wanted to find an artist and a track that had the power and emotion to help our film really connect, and so for the first time in his career, Frank Ocean agreed to license his music for commercial purposes.

His moving track “Godspeed” set the tone for this powerful message of hope to the entire world, featuring on everything from our 90s hero film, to 15s social stories and 6s programmatic ads- as well as TV across 17 markets.

The song celebrates love and felt like the perfect fit for our holiday campaign, where we told the stories of real people who were able to hug, at a time when many could not.

The hero film alone was watched 3,625% more than the previous best on Zalando’s social channels and was shared over 100,000 times. Over 1,700 new Zalando followers came directly from the film.

In the last chapter of our campaign, we engaged our followers & influential voices from the world of fashion such as Brooklyn Beckham, Jeremy Scott and Diane von Furstenberg and asked everyone to share their own private hug pictures. For every hug shared, we made a donation to the Red Cross coronavirus response and local mental health services, an activation that led to over 3000 hugs being shared in 10 days, and a 100,000€ donation for the Red Cross.

Over the entire campaign duration, brand mentions increased by over 100% and we reached an estimated 171m Europeans in total.