Thanksgiving has come and gone, but it’s not too late to think about what made this holiday so special. Whether you’re a fan of turkey or just looking for an excuse to binge watch your favorite show, we’ve got you covered with these 13 content examples that give us all the Thanksgiving feels.
Content marketing is a hot topic in the digital world. Content that stands out from the crowd will get more eyes and create stronger brand loyalty. These 13 stand-out content examples give us all the Thanksgiving feels. Read more in detail here: content marketing 101.
All of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, have a wonderful day! Even if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, it’s a fantastic opportunity to reflect on everything we have to be grateful for.
Despite the many hurdles faced over the last 18 months, businesses have risen to the occasion, adapting their strategies to establish better audience relationships.
In honor of this day of thanks, we’ve compiled a list of 13 standout examples from this year’s Content Marketing Awards, as well as other content highlights, that relate to the holiday’s themes of travel, friends and family, food, and giving to those in need. We hope they will motivate you to keep pushing to do and be better for your company, your customers, and the world as a whole.
Getting over the river (and in the air)
Travel firms are increasingly using content to persuade consumers that safety is their first concern now that people are more confident about resuming face-to-face family visits.
Lonely Planet is number one.
Lonely Planet, for example, is a brand that is nearly associated with vital travel advice and enjoyable travel experiences. The company collaborated with Healthline, a medical information company, to create a website where worried travelers can get the latest information on Covid-19 travel conditions and restrictions, as well as advice on the safest destinations and activities, and tips on how to deal with health issues that may arise during their journeys.
Appetizing tidbit: When formerly normal activities become unexpectedly stressful, your audience will appreciate immediate direction and aid that your content may give.
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2. Qantas
However, even before resuming operations, travel companies looked into other options for assisting audiences in overcoming their geographic limits. Many of them provided engaging stay-at-home vacation experiences. For example, Qantas developed Travel Insider, a multimedia portal that includes guided virtual tours of major museums, zoos, and art galleries throughout the globe, as well as one-of-a-kind locations like Uluru and the Sydney Opera House.
According to @Joderama through @CMIContent, @Qantas provided thrilling travel experiences online to the stay-at-home globe during the epidemic. To Tweet, just click here.
Tip of the day: Efforts like these show that there are several ways to create a good experience. Consider what your gifts mean to you emotionally, and consider different techniques that might deliver a comparable feeling of fulfillment.
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Scott’s Low-Cost Flights
Scott’s Cheap Flights, a discount travel provider, has increased its digital content offerings to encourage travelers to keep thinking about – and preparing for – their future adventures. Despite this, the business refocused its current travel deal newsletters to target more urgent travel needs, in addition to launching a new series of aspirational guidelines and a data-backed State of Cheap Flights report. The company’s creator has devoted his weekly address to issues such as reimbursements for canceled reservations, forecasts for travel to fantasy places, and the effect of continuous pricing swings.
According to @Joderama through @CMIContent, @scottsflights CEO altered his weekly travel column to discuss practical (refunds on canceled reservations) and inspiring (predictions for travel resuming to desired locations). To Tweet, just click here.
Tip of the day: Providing content-based tools that enable your audience to make better choices is always a successful strategy for increasing brand loyalty. Scott’s Cheap Flights was also awarded Best eNewsletter at the 2021 Content Marketing Awards in this instance (CMA).
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4. The Virginia Tourism Corporation
Similarly, the Virginia Tourism Corporation adjusted its content strategy away from recruiting out-of-state tourists and toward assisting the state’s small businesses, who have been impacted hard by a lack of consumer foot traffic. In the CMA travel category, the resultant Virginia Is for Lovers: Discover Your WanderLove campaign won Best Content Marketing Program. On its website and social media channels, it promoted lower-risk local travel experiences – short regional road excursions, beautiful drives, and outdoor leisure activities – using text and video storytelling.
A tasty tidbit: Service-oriented enterprises cannot thrive without good relationships. Every link in the supply chain is strengthened by supporting the companies that support yours.
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Spending valuable time with friends and family
Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time for us to reconnect with the ones we love. This year, it may mean spending another day with the people you’ve been hiding at home with 24 hours a day, but many of us are hoping to reconnect with long-distance friends and family members.
Aller Media is number five.
First and foremost, there’s mom. On this day (and every day, I may say), mothers are typically the hardestworking members of the family, yet they don’t always receive the recognition they deserve. Aller Media created Motherhood, a multiplatform initiative packed with realistic experiences and poignant personal tales of support, with the purpose of giving women in Sweden with a community where they would feel seen and appreciated. The material as a whole conveys the brand’s fundamental message: parenting is “a sisterhood far apart from picking on each other, mom-shaming, and beauty filters.”
A tasty tidbit: If you want your content to speak with authenticity and authority, it never hurts to enlist the help of informed insiders.
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6. AARP
Speaking of sisterhood, for its CMA-winning submission for Best Digital Publication, AARP took a different approach to female familial ties: Sisters From AARP focuses on encouraging the friendships that Black women form with their peers.
The free weekly newsletter collects tales that mirror their real-life experiences, give them a feeling of belonging and satisfaction, and highlight the depth of their community ties. Style, health, money, relationships, and other topics are covered in each issue. AARP also developed a series of online events centered on gratitude, religion, and attaining personal satisfaction, which were related to exclusive newsletter interviews.
Yummy tidbit: AARP knows that just because there are millions of members doesn’t imply they all have the same life experiences. Breaking down your content offerings into particular areas of interest might make your audience feel more heard – and give your company a more personal vibe.
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The Humane Society of the United States is number seven.
There are our animal and feathery companions and family members, too, should we forget. Pets have a unique role in their owners’ life. It’s no wonder that animal welfare is at the center of some popular and emotionally impactful content marketing, given the growing interest in plant-based diets for environmental, personal health, and ethical reasons.
For example, there’s the CMA-winning issue of All Animals, the Humane Society of the United States’ main publication. This periodical provides readers with information about the organization’s activity and encourages them to become involved. In-depth coverage of hard-hitting subjects and lighter food are balanced with compelling photography, practical suggestions, and the newest animal welfare news from the Humane Society. Its Quarantine Buddies piece, which featured reader responses about how their companion animals helped them manage throughout the outbreak, was one feel-good endeavor.
Consumers might have a variety of motivations to support your brand’s cause. Give them a means to explain their reasoning in their own words rather than guessing what they are thinking.
Getting to the hearts of customers via their stomachs
Togetherness and levity were often hard to come by with individuals cooped up online and at home. Many folks resorted to the delights of cooking and dining together as a family to help recreate those sentiments of warmth and connection.
Hormel Foods is number eight on the list.
Hormel Foods created the Hormel Film Festival to bring the comfortable warmth of comedy, camaraderie, and optimism back to the table via a series of films about amazing individuals who have a special personal connection to the company’s classic goods.
The crew meticulously replicated the thrill of an in-person film festival in this first-of-its-kind event. Digital tickets were distributed to invitees and shared on social media; movie posters were accessible for download and printing; and a livestreamed Q&A with the directors, actors, and crews of the films was conducted. Importantly, all of the event’s advertising message centered on the human tales rather than the brand’s participation in them.
It’s not necessary to organize a whole film festival around the role your company plays in your consumers’ life, but if they’re ready to share their tales with you, it’s worth acknowledging and honoring them in your content.
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9. Food52
The CMI team offered another wonderful example from Food52, a company that has established a culinary community around its recipes and equipment, in a recent Hot Takes piece. The company is hosting a community gift swap for the 11th year in a row, in which members trade food presents (including handmade things) as a means to bring their online ties into the real world. Participants are also invited to give at least $10 to Feeding America as part of the exchange, so that others might benefit from the warmth of a nice meal and the feeling of belonging to a caring community.
Appetizing tidbit: This endeavor not only allows the brand’s community members to interact in person, but it also enables them to contribute to the larger good.
Epicurious is number ten.
When it comes to food-centric content, it’s worth noting that customers are becoming more concerned about where the components in their meals originate from. Epicurious declared this year that it will no longer include new recipes that contain beef because of this ethical issue.
Epicurious claims it made this choice based on its team’s principles and what they regard as the greatest interests of society at large, as Gina Balarin outlined in her essay on content marketing ethics. Though there are reasons for and against this decision, standing up for something your company believes in is a sensible approach.
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Recognizing that there will be more holidays to come
Of course, no one can think about Thanksgiving in the United States without also thinking of Black Friday, which serves as a reminder that – if retail companies have anything to say about it – it’s Christmas shopping season.
Amazon is number eleven.
Amazon, as one of the world’s largest retailers, goes to great lengths to make it easy for customers to discover the ideal present for everyone on their Christmas shopping list. This year’s print edition doesn’t fail as a marketing tool or a fun, engaging piece of content, and the brand’s annual Christmas catalog is a dazzling, interactive monument to that.
In addition to games, stickers, and puzzles that encourage youngsters to read the catalog from cover to cover, parents may scan QR codes to save time finding the product page for each item on their children’s wish list. Amazon, on the other hand, uses family-friendly features like Fox’s Jolly Adventure to pass the time. Scanning the QR code brings the catalog’s woodland map to life with augmented reality overlays, allowing youngsters to interact with some alive forest animals that seem to be in the same room as them.
According to @Joderama through @CMIContent, @Amazon’s catalog employs QR codes for parents to conveniently identify things on wish lists and for kids to watch family friend entertainment like Fox’s Jolly Adventure. To Tweet, just click here.
It’s difficult to attract customers’ attention and pique their interest during the frantic Christmas shopping season. Immersive and sticky material that brings surprise and joy, on the other hand, may be quite beneficial.
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Giving back to the community
Perhaps the most significant of all the rituals and trappings associated with this holiday is tied to a purpose-driven message: show thanks by sharing our good luck with those in need. (After all, it’s not named “Thanksgiving” is it?)
Consumers, especially those from younger generations, are increasingly preferring to do business with companies that make it a point to give back, and they want such companies to clearly convey how they contribute to the greater good.
Bombas, no. 12
Bombas, for example, rises to the situation in a variety of ways. For starters, for every transaction, the firm sends a reciprocal comfort item to a person experiencing homelessness, such as socks, a T-shirt, or underwear. Bombas, on the other hand, allows its supporters to contribute their own ideas. This recent Instagram post, for example, provides easy activism advice, recommendations, and ideas and reinforces them with emotionally engaging photographs that concentrate on people rather than their goods.
Tidbit to savor: People who wish to assist others aren’t always sure where to begin. This effort helps the audience transform their good intentions into active engagement by lowering the barrier to personal interaction.
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Bank of America is number thirteen.
Bank of America is another example in this line. Its community-focused content marketing initiative, Local Impact, highlights how private-sector businesses may help local communities that are economically disadvantaged due to systematic racism and other issues make beneficial social changes.
More than 75 films, essays, slideshows, and infographics were produced as a consequence of the program, which focused on four important issues: (1) food insecurity, (2) access to medical supplies and health services, (3) social vulnerabilities, and (4) racial equality and economic opportunity. The material emphasizes Bank of America’s commitment to its customers and the vital local institutions they depend on, such as hospitals, schools, and supermarkets.
Appetizing tidbit: It’s the proper thing to do to use your material to create important dialogues about topics like food hunger, racial injustice, and financial instability. The best approach to accomplish it is to provide clarity on how your company is actively trying to address issues.
Fill up your plate, but don’t forget to refuel your goals.
From the CMI team to yours, we hope you take some time off this Christmas season to recharge your batteries and be ready to generate fantastic content that empowers your companies to accomplish and be better for their consumers tomorrow.
Subscribe to CMI’s free daily or weekly email to refresh your content marketing ideas and abilities.
Content Marketing Institute/Joseph Kalinowski/Cover picture
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