How to create an Instagram Advent Calendar ?

Christmas... We know you love it. We know you're also looking forward to this beautiful day. And what better way to wait until Christmas than with an advent calendar? 🎄

Do you know the origin of the advent calendar?

This tradition comes from Germany! In the 19th century, children from German Protestant families were given holy and pious pictures every morning in December. In 1908, the publisher Gerhard Lang proposed a cardboard calendar with illustrations for each day. The small windows that we know appeared in 1920. The gourmet version with chocolates was only introduced in 1958.

Now that you know everything, let's go back to a more recent version: the Instagram Advent Calendar !

This game mechanic is ideal for:

🎁 Provide your community with daily rewards

👀 Increase your visibility

🔁 Convert your leads into customers

🤩 Engage your community

❤️ Build loyalty with your audience

Looking for inspiration to create your Instagram advent calendar ?
You've come to the right place. Come on, let's get started! 🎅🏽

The digital advent calendar in timeline

On the occasion of Christmas, timeline contests on Instagram are proliferating.

The principle is simple: a post, one or more prizes to win, and a more or less engaging participation system:

• follow one or more accounts,
• like the post,
• comment on it and mention a certain number of people,
• share it in a story...

A partnership between two brands

For their Instagram advent calendar, Girls in Paris decided to partner with a different brand each day.

Here, it is with the florist Pampa that she offered a bouquet of dried flowers. To participate, all you had to do was follow the two brands, like the post and mention two people. The re-sharing of the post in a story allowed to double the chances of the participant to win.

Benefits:

➕ Aggregate audiences from two brands

👀 Increase your visibility

One day, a product

In order to combine the useful with the pleasant, you can present a product of your brand every day with the possibility of winning it. Thanks to this mechanism, you can talk about your products and increase their visibility, while rewarding your audience.

For the L'Oréal Paris advent calendar, each day, a product was highlighted with beauty tips from experts. The video format is very interesting because it allows to better capture the attention of users. For this advent calendar, there were no products to win. However, we can imagine the same content with the possibility of winning for the followers.

Benefits:

🌟 Showcase your products

💸 Increase your sales

Create a periodic quiz

Does your community really know your brand? During this month of December, take advantage of the daily digital advent calendar to test them!

You can ask questions about your products, your values, your team... Don't forget, customers want transparency, so don't hesitate to show them the backstage of your company.

The participants who answer correctly will then be able to participate in the draw. You can also ask them to follow one or more accounts, like the post and comment on it by mentioning other people.

Benefits:

🌟 Increase your brand awareness

👫 Strengthen the connection with your audience

With an influencer

You can also make a collaboration with an influencer. There are two possibilities:

• The influencer collaborates only with your brand and will offer your products every day on his account.
• The influencer collaborates with several brands during this period and offers your products in one day of the digital advent calendar.

For her Instagram advent calendar, sports influencer Sissy Mua collaborated with several different brands each day. On the 6th day, the brand Hello Body was highlighted. To win: 3 prizes worth a total of €630.

To participate, she asked to follow her 3 accounts and to comment on this publication as well as those of the two other accounts. The fact that you have to comment on the publications of the other accounts to participate is very engaging for the user and can be considered as restrictive for some. However, it does give visibility to the different accounts.

Benefits:

🤩 Take advantage of the influencer's community.

↗️ Increase your visibility and reach

User generated content

For your next digital advent calendar, you can also highlight your community.

At the beginning of the month, you can propose to your followers to publish posts on their account highlighting your products or services.

Each day, you can then choose your favorite publication and repost it on your brand's account. You can offer vouchers to convert prospects into customers or to retain your existing customers. You can also offer products from your brand to thank them for their engagement.

Benefits:

❤️ Strengthen your brand's legitimacy

🆓 Enjoy free media content

The mobile-first digital advent calendar

Now that you're an expert on the digital timeline advent calendar, let's move on to another format: the mobile-first immersive experience!

But what does it really consist of? It's an experience that includes one or more games accessible via a URL or a QR code that can be shared on all your marketing channels: social networks, in a newsletter, as an embed on your website... If you are not very techy, there are many solutions that allow you to easily create them and integrate mini-games, media content, CTAs... Each day, you can then unlock a box in order to create an appointment with your audience.

Benefits:

🎁 Offer a unique experience to your audience

️ ↗️ Increase the engagement of your community

Increase your visibility

For Christmas, the city of Vincennes launched its digital advent calendar in order to highlight its merchants. Each day, participants were asked a question about the city of Vincennes. The experience was shared on social networks and allowed to win each day many prizes offered by Vincennes businesses.

The objective of the campaign was to bring visibility to the merchants and to convert the participants.

Build your brand

Vorwerk, a brand of the Thermomix group, launched this digital advent calendar to build brand awareness and collect leads.

Each week in December, they shared a challenge in the form of a video quiz. Each challenge allowed participants to get an extra chance to be drawn. This mechanic is ideal to create a regular appointment with users.

Animate your company internally

For its digital advent calendar, the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson offered its employees a unique experience in the form of a story. Shared internally, the objective of this campaign was to increase engagement within the company.

Each day, participants could collect points by answering 3 questions.

Would you like us to discuss your next digital advent calendar?
Please contact us!