Over the last few years Christmas advertising in Ireland has become an arms race of sentimentality. Brands have been falling over each other to make the most emotionally charged, tear jerking, gut wrenchingly Christmassy campaigns they can.

Faced with competitors with much larger budgets, and a cacophony of international brands who were trying to make their customers cry, Irish telecom company Meteor had to do something different to stand out.

Their answer was to take a more honest approach. They introduced Ireland to Nicholas St Wenceslas, CEO of Christmas LTD – the company responsible for commercialising the holidays.

The campaign was Meteor’s most successful ever – far exceeding all brand and commercial objectives. Meteor’s Unlimited message was the most recognised and liked in a category dominated by international brands with much larger budgets.

Through targeted, unique, channel specific content like Nicholas’ album, Meteor achieved the highest visibility among telecom providers across all social platforms, seeing an incredible 65% increase in online sales as compared with the previous year.

All the more remarkable because Meteor basically spent Christmas advertising a company that didn’t even exist.

In order to reach the huge number of Irish people who stream Christmas music on Spotify and other music sites, Nicholas recorded, released and advertised “A very profitable Christmas” – an album of festive favourites changed just enough so that he didn’t have to pay royalties.

The album was advertised as a film within a rich media banner. After watching the ad, you could listen to the whole album right there on Spotify, on SoundCloud or on Christmas LTD’s corporate website. You could also add it to playlists and share it with friends.

Meteor’s target audience is anyone in the market for a mobile phone, which in Ireland is pretty much everyone. So this was a fully integrated campaign, with a particular focus on creating unique, entertaining shareable content for new channels and social platforms.

Nicholas was ubiquitous. Wherever Meteor’s customers went Nicholas was there, trying to squeeze every penny out of them in new. So when it came to Spotify and other music streaming sites, we had Nicholas record, release and advertise his own Christmas album.