The world was entering its second straight holiday season in the life and times of Covid… and we’d had enough. Insights showed people were tired of talking about “these uncertain times;” we wanted desperately to celebrate - in any form or fashion - and to come together, even if not side-by-side. The desire for that feeling of togetherness unites us as humans, and in that, we saw an opportunity to highlight the spark we Texans feel, one of the things that makes us all different, and yet, the same.
Texas tradition.
No matter what the “what” is for your family, we wanted to celebrate the little things that bring us together - and the great unifier, joy.
With Facebook’s newly launched Shoppable Livestream feature, we set out to modernize the network TV holiday special by creating a one-of-a-kind, branded, shoppable and interactive LIVE event, streamed on Facebook and YouTube, celebrating the diverse and authentic traditions of featured Texans. From Olympians, Texas Red Dirt stars, to NBA hall-of-famers, viewers got to share in the diverse holiday traditions of some of their favorite celebrities, as well as from our family of H-E-B Partners.
Ultimately, our goal was to continue to build H-E-B’s brand equity, nurturing the trust Texans’ have in H-E-B - not only through the awareness that H-E-B is their go-to for all things holiday - but also in knowing that H-E-B is more than a store. We’re a part of the community - a part of the tradition.
We started with a question, “How do we celebrate joy and togetherness in a world where we’re forced to be apart?” We likely have all asked ourselves that question over the last couple years.
And then inspiration struck. We don’t have to be together to come together; we can still see, feel (and sometimes almost smell) the joy of the holidays. And maybe we all needed a little reminder that joy still existed in this world. So, we packed that “curled up by the fire, pajamas on Christmas morning, smell of tamales” feeling into a box, wrapped it with a bow - and thus, A Very Texas Holiday became our gift to Texans everywhere.
We engaged H-E-B leadership, Texas celebrities, our viewers, and our wonderful storyteller, James Van Der Beek, and crafted our very own Texas version of “A Night Before Christmas,” weaving together each person’s traditions into one Very Texas Holiday storybook.
One might not appreciate the challenges that accompany crafting a bespoke story, full of authentic Texas traditions, laughter, and nostalgia but we felt it was important to embrace a truly Texan holiday. Our team truly became a media production house as we worked with celebrity agents, SAG, and set designers to bring together the live. We fashioned the Holiday Live like a network TV special, complete with celebrity host, James Van Der Beek and created a custom set dressed with H-E-B products. We coordinated with Facebook to create a promoted countdown for the live to drive RSVPs to the event and worked to reuse the assets after the live to run as ads for the remainder of our holiday campaign. We also coordinated with our ecommerce team to create a custom shoppable collection with all the featured items from the holiday live which customers could shop from during and after the live event. Not to mention, upon going live, we executed a war room to respond to viewers in real-time, execute giveaways throughout the program, and utilize Facebook’s newly launched shoppable live feature.
We optimized “A Very Texas Holiday Live” based on learnings from previous live shopping events, mindfully applying even the smallest of strategic tweaks, in an effort to create an experience Texas families would welcome into their homes during the holiday. A combination of something “spectacular”, giveaways, celebrity Texans, interactive shoppability, as well as a peek into the people behind H-E-B, led not just to viewership, but enthusiastic participation.
Finally, we wove in the H-E-B tradition of giving back, by including a fundraiser for Feeding Texas. During the live event, we asked customers to donate through a fundraising plug-in on Facebook, allowing our fellow Texans to donate directly to the non-profit, providing holiday meals to those in need across the state.
Ultimately, we created a holiday special by weaving together the traditions that bring joy to Texans across the state all from the comfort of your couch and Facebook feed.
During the live stream we had a 33% engagement rate on Facebook, with over 15k comments from customers and 11k clicks to heb.com. Additionally, during the live stream customers watched a whopping average of 23 minutes on Facebook. In total, “A Very Texas Holiday Live” garnered over 525K views across Facebook and YouTube and amassed 2,535 hours of watch time (105 days!) Ads created from our H-E-B holiday live assets resulted in an impressively positive lift in ad recall (4.1 pt), brand awareness (6.7 pts) and consideration (1.8 pts).
