Lifestyle

Lexus’s Red Bow Stars In 20th Year of ‘December To Remember’ Ads


It’s only fitting that the huge red bow should be the center of the creative for new commercials for Lexus that mark the twentieth anniversary of its industry-changing “December To Remember” year-end sales campaign.

The end of the year for the U.S. auto market was basically a wasteland of price-based promotional activity and sleepy dealer showrooms when the Toyota-owned luxury brand changed things forever by slapping a huge bow on the roof of a Lexus sedan, creating emotionally effective advertising and inviting American consumers to re-imagine the possibilities for car shopping during the Christmas holidays.

It may have been a stretch to figure that many people would actually park a new Lexus in their driveway on Christmas morning and hand the keys over to a loved one as a gift, but Lexus did spark a new attitude among OEMs about the possibilities of turning the end of the year into a bona fide selling season. And two decades after December To Remember broke the mold, nearly every brand selling in the U.S. market mounts a significant marketing and sales initiative around Thanksgiving and extending through the end of the year.

“When we launched December To Remember, it really was a new way to approach year-end sales events, in contrast to our competitors,” Lisa Materazzo, vice president of Lexus marketing, told me. “We took a less transactional and more human approach – we started with the consumer.”

Along the way, Lexus ads for the season have become as iconic as some of the best-remembered Christmas advertisements of all time, including the Budweiser Clydesdales and Norelco’s sleigh-riding Santa. The brand has retained a number of elements throughout the 20 years of commercials that have reinforced this stature, including the “December To Remember” moniker, the essential background jingle, the childlike joy portrayed by recipients in the ads – and the big red bow that adorns the vehicle on Christmas morning.

“The bow was other colors during some early ads, including gold, blue and white,” Materazzo said. “But we did pretty quickly settle on red, and of course it visually pops in the ads. It also has a very clear tie to the holidays that has built=in meaning for folks when they see that red bow.”

In this year’s TV ads, the bow takes center stage as never before as families try to hide the huge object in the home so the recipient remains clueless that a new Lexus will be parked in the household’s driveway for them on a snowy Christmas morning.

“It’s an approach that’s very relatable leading up to the holidays,” Materazzo said. “Everyone can relate to hiding presents, where to put them, how not to get caught, how to keep them secret until the holidays.”

But Materazzo said that, by now, a surprising number of Americans do actually buy or lease a new Lexus for loved ones for the holidays. And such has been the impact of the big red bow that many dealers of competing makes carry their own inventories of bows to put on purchases made during the Christmas season for customers to put on new vehicles – regardless of the fact that other brands’ holiday marketing campaigns typically stay away from the bow symbolism.

“ a surprising number So successful has Lexus’s big-red-bow campaign become that



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