After a particularly unsuccessful Christmas shopping trip last weekend, I decided to do the only sensible thing and take matters online.

Obviously, being me, I soon ended up doing a bit of ‘wish list’ shopping for myself on a couple of my favourite sites and I was met with number of different Christmas campaigns and homepages. I thought it was really interesting to see how brands were using their digital platforms to create a memorable online customer experience and engage their customers this festive season. It definitely makes the whole Christmas shopping experience a lot less tedious and any gift ideas and inspiration is always appreciated in my book! Below is a round-up of some of my favourites from this year.

Dear Topshop

Topshop’s homepage has recently been taken over by the launch of ‘Dear Topshop’ – the brands first global and fully-integrated Pinterest Christmas campaign.

‘Dear Topshop’ allows users to pull together Topshop items from across all of the brands platforms. By searching through categories such as ‘A Gift that will wow’ and ‘all things that sparkle’ consumers can pin items and share them on their own boards, while the top pinned products are showcased on Topshop.com’s homepage each day. To add an element of competition, Topshop have also given customers the opportunity to win a Topshop Shopping Spree by submitting their Pinterest boards to them.

Topshop also bought the campaign in-store by producing giant touchscreens in their flagship stores which allow shoppers to interact with the campaign. The campaign is a really nice example of how retailers are using Pinterest’s newly launched API and it really capitalises on the popularity of Pinterest as a place to collect fashion inspirations and ideas.

Whistles Advent Calendar

This is a regular Christmas campaign for Whistles, being their fourth advent calendar, but they’ve proved really popular with Whistles fans and are always very creative.

Every day, Whistles invites users to visit the advent calendar and ‘crack the ice’ by clicking their mouse repeatedly to reveal a different prize, discount or offer. I really liked the addition of interactivity here as it creates a bit of suspense as to what the prize might be. Once the prize has been revealed, users are given the chance to win by providing Whistles with their e-mail address which signs them up to their mailing list. They are also encouraged to tweet and share on Facebook to win.

By taking part in the advent calendar, Whistles are creating a desire to go back to the website each day and users are also able to look back through the previous days at what prizes they missed and also get a sneaky peek of future prizes through the ‘ice.’ It’s a really nice way to showcase Whistles range of stock and encourage repeat custom.

Harvey Nichols #sorryispentitonmyself

I love this tongue-in-cheek viral campaign from Harvey Nichols, which definitely takes an alternative view of Christmas shopping. Through their #imsorryispentitonmyself campaign, Harvey Nichols encourage shoppers to spend as little on their loved ones as possible in favour of indulging themselves. They have also produced a limited range of ultra-low cost Harvey Nichols branded gifts for those who understand that a cheap gift for their nearest and dearest means a bigger gift for themselves. I particularly like the real plastic door stop for £1.43 and authentic Lincolnshire gravel for £1.61 which amazingly sold out within a few days of the campaign launch. Genius!

Burberry

The British luxury brand Burberry has launched a festive campaign called ‘Burberry with Love.’ The advert is a culmination of their entire year’s worth of campaigns celebrating love and romance including its Burberry Kisses campaign in collaboration with Google.

The campaign is supported by a ‘full festive takeover’ of their social media and they are also celebrating ‘25 days of Christmas’ by publishing images and videos on their Instagram each day.

Mulberry

This is a really nice example of a brand combining its offline and online presence to create a festive campaign. The iconic handbag and fashion brand has taken over five windows at Harrods to tell a branded fairy tale to engage consumers this holiday season. A theme that is likely to tap into consumer’s nostalgia for the childhood fairy stories and to provide a memorable customer experience when shopping for Mulberry gifts.

Online, the Mulberry website has also been transformed into a fairy tale wonderland, and they’ve used the theme to display its gifts, allowing you to ‘Shop the Fairy Story.’ Mulberry also allowed all of its followers to join in its window unveiling by tweeting from the event and sharing photos on its Instagram account and transformed its Twitter profile page to match the snowy fairy tale theme of its campaign.

ASOS

ASOS have been running their #tonightis campaign since September which embraces the idea of ‘living in the moment.’

For Christmas they have teamed up with the @OfficialSanta Twitter account and asked consumers to build their ultimate ASOS wish list and tweet it straight into him with the hashtag #tonightis.

@OfficialSanta has been replying to people’s wishes using personalised Vine’s and handing out on the spot prizes from people’s wish lists. I really like the effort they’ve gone too with creating personalised videos and it definitely created lots of buzz around the campaign.

The Goodhood Store

Probably, one of the lesser known brands on this list but Goodhood Store is definitely one of my favourite online stores to have a browse around. It stocks a wide range of contemporary menswear, women’s wear and homeware and its online shop is an excellent extension of its physical store in Shoreditch.

I’m a big fan of clean, minimalist, colour co-ordinated design and I really do like their beautifully curated gift guides which allow you to click on the items to buy and also share them via Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest etc. There are various gift guides on the site including gifts for men, women and home all of which are aesthetically pleasing. I like the way they’ve used their online shop in a similar way to a physical shop by choosing products that really complement each other. The whole experience is really user-friendly and really is a pleasure to shop.

Liberty of London

While this is not exactly an online campaign, I still thought it was worth including because I love the shop and equally loved the documentary.

While many of the big retailers are investing millions in television adverts and campaigns, Liberty of London has opened its doors to Channel 4 to produce a three part documentary that follows their eccentric employees in the run up to Christmas. You can also meet the staff over on their website and they’ve embedded footage of the staff on various department pages on their website. Other retailers must be green with envy as Liberty has managed to wangle approximately 156 hours of free coverage in the busiest shopping month of the year and I don’t doubt that the series will have a huge impact on the footfall to their shop and visits to their website.

So there you have it; just a few of the festive fashion campaigns I’ve seen floating around the internet this Christmas. Which one is your favourite and are there any other good ones that I have missed?