Canadian Tire shows holiday spirit

Although Canadian Tire had traditionally enjoyed top market share over the Christmas holiday period, its dominance in the outdoor lighting and seasonal décor categories had been on the decline thanks to fierce competition.

Canadian Tire's goal was to reclaim Christmas and re-energize the spirit of Canadians. To help light up the holiday season and spread Christmas cheer across the nation, Canadian Tire and Tribal DDB Toronto launched a first-of-its-kind, 30-ft. tall "Christmas Spirit Tree," equipped with 3,000 individually programmed LED lights, in Toronto's Union Station.

Using Sysomos, a social media monitoring software, the agency scoured Canadian blogs, forums, social networks and news sites for posts and messages containing a variety of Christmas keywords. Then Tribal DDB transformed these messages into data that was used to boost the colour and intensity of lights on the tree.

The tree was streamed live online at ChristmasSpiritTree.ca and on digital billboards. Spirit Tree leveraged Rogers' LTE just weeks after it came to market and used it to power the high bandwidth live stream, providing near real-time response to users interacting with the tree.

OOH decals and signage was placed throughout Union Station to generate further awareness for the 125,000 people who pass through on a daily basis.

Canadian Tire's overall social presence increased during this time, with more than 660 blog mentions, 780 news mentions, 2,600 tweets and 2,200 forum posts about the brand. And it successfully defended its number one market share for the 2011 Christmas season.