Hey, guys and Merry Christmas! I hope you all found what you were wishing for right under the tree this morning. Or, in the interest of being completely fair and politically correct, I hope that all you non-Christmas celebrating folks are having a rather nice Thursday. All the same, we here at Top Design Magazine have figured we’d do our share to take part in the general giving mood and we’ve selected an array of Christmas-themed advertisements that we found interesting in order to treat you to a little something nice.

Every country has some sort of Christmas tradition or another, for example, in Romania, the films Home Alone 1 & 2 are always on TV during the holidays, The Netherlands always watch Donald Duck at 3 pm on Christmas day and the people in Japan always eat KFC on the day Santa Clause comes to town.

This last part is due to the fact that KFC had a few particularly productive ad campaigns some years back that made eating Kentucky Fried Chicken’s products one of the most popular nation-wide traditions there are. How did they do it? Well, you can read the whole story here, but the gist of it is this: KFC created a number of special holiday offers for Japan that sold at good prices and made up a meal that was perfectly fit to feed a party and with the increase of importance of Christmas in Japan (from a commercial point of view, seeing as the Japanese don’t really celebrate the whole ‘birth of our Lord and Savior’ affair), KFC has made a name for itself through these traditional Christmas offers and has reached the point where people line up for blocks in order to get their tasty fried chicken on the 25^th. Another company who likes to go big for Christmas is Coca Cola, these guys are constantly working on marketing strategies to showcase their brand during the holidays.

And seeing as marketing campaigns on Christmas have produced such impressive results for KFC and Coca Cola, it’s no wonder other companies and causes have begun their own Christmas-themed ad campaigns.

First off, there has been quite an increase lately in Christmas-themed advertising that seeks to raise awareness about ecological, social and humanitarian causes. Take a look at some of the amazing advertisements aimed at lowering the headcount for trees cut down, fund raising for Christmas dinner for rescued dogs, raising money for the homeless, increasing awareness about the responsibilities of giving a pet as a gift, advertising charitable events or donating blood to the Red Cross.

Then again, there are a number of firms out there who are just plain having fun with their brands this Christmas. Whether it’s Kit Kat creating Advent Calendars, CreAds showcasing their artistic chops for this time of year or SkyCinema bringing a Christmas-y twist to classic films, no one is exempt from taking part in the Christmas spirit.