Best Practices for Inclusive Holiday Communications
In the United States, the year's final months bring the holiday season, a key period for marketers in terms of revenue potential and reflecting core brand values. It’s also a nuanced time of year for messaging and communications.
Today’s audiences expect inclusive holiday marketing, interpreting it as a signpost of a brand’s values, authenticity, and relatability. Approaching holiday messaging with a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) strengthens your brand’s impact and helps you more meaningfully connect with wider audiences.
Beware these common holiday messaging pitfalls:
Be All about Christmas (or a Single Holiday): A narrow, singular focus on Christmas alienates audiences who celebrate different holidays or don’t observe religious holidays at all. Ensure that marketing efforts mirror the breadth and diversity of your audiences’ holiday traditions and celebrations.
Sales, Sales, Sales! Overlooking the deeper meaning and significance of holiday traditions feels exploitative and dismissive. Strike a balance between business goals and human connection.
Performative DEIA: Only having DEIA-informed marketing during the holiday season without deeper and ongoing efforts for the remainder of the year comes across as superficial and performative. Instead, reflect a broader and consistent commitment to DEIA year-round to build trust.
Neglecting Global and Regional Differences: Sending the same holiday greeting globally—or applying regionally-specific greetings too broadly—creates dissonance between your brand and audience. Localize your message for greater relevance and authenticity.
Ignoring Your Team’s Needs: Having carefully crafted messaging for your external audiences while forgetting the needs of your internal stakeholders creates a disconnect of values. Consider the unique and diverse holiday needs of your staff and team, too—such as allowing employees the flexibility to observe holidays based on their own cultural calendars.
Instead, engage in these best practices for DEIA-informed holiday marketing:
Acknowledge and Represent the Diversity of Holidays: Speak to the range of holidays and festivities celebrated at the end of the year—Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the Winter Solstice, for example. Understand the timing of different holidays and plan your marketing accordingly.
Choose More Encompassing Messaging: Opt for broad and more general greetings, such as “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings,” over religiously specific salutations like “Merry Christmas.”
Be Visually Inclusive: Visually reflect the range of traditions and people. Choose universally joyful symbols and imagery. Research holiday symbols and their cultural significance for accuracy and respect.
Avoid Stereotypes: Beware thinking that everyone or every culture celebrates the same holidays in the same ways. If you reference a holiday, don’t reduce it to stereotypes of superficial elements. Respect its deeper meaning and aim to meaningfully understand.
Emphasize Accessibility: Don’t forget accessibility in your holiday marketing. Design for visibility, provide alternative text, include camel case in hashtags, add captions, and ensure websites are navigable via screen readers.
Show Your Inclusity with Sincerity and Depth: Practice what you speak. Show your brand’s DEIA values—perhaps by supporting historically underrepresented communities or deeply understanding the concerns and interests of your diverse audiences.
Connect to the Broader Socio-Political Context: Acknowledge current events and the broader context, such as economic issues, politics, or social concerns. Ignoring the issues affecting people’s lives during the holidays comes across as superficial and insincere. Instead, bring connection and awareness to your marketing.
By paying attention to these best practices and common pitfalls, marketers can create DEIA holiday messaging that is respectful, inclusive, and representative of diverse audiences. This fosters a sense of belonging and enhances your brand's commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Be A Part of the Conversation
AMA PDX is excited to invite you to join our Cup of Equity, an in-person meet-up for marketers to engage in intimate conversations on timely diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) topics. Moderated by the AMA DEIA Committee, this is a safe space to explore the challenges, concerns, and questions you grapple with, especially as the United States changes political leadership. While you won’t walk away with all the answers, you’ll leave with fresh perspectives and a deeper understanding of these crucial issues.
Our inaugural event was October 24 at Either/Or, a queer-friendly, POC owned coffee shop in NE Portland. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this roundtable discussion! We truly appreciate your openness and willingness to engage in important conversations. The rich and meaningful discussions offered new perspectives on marketing to diverse communities, especially in an election year.
Stay tuned to our events webpage for our next Cup of Equity in January 2025!
In the meantime, check out the AMA PDX blog for best practices on incorporating DEIA into your marketing efforts.