Merrier marketing with our top 4 Christmas jigsaw puzzle ideas
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This article is all about using online jigsaw puzzles to gamify your Christmas marketing.
“Jigsaws?” you ask. “For marketing?”
Yes, that’s right, we said jigsaw puzzles! And with very good reason.
Christmas is one of the most playful times of year, where people are more inclined to have fun, and more open to engaging with brands (someone’s gotta make the presents) – however, you only need a passing awareness of the competition among Christmas TV ads to know that it’s the time of year where every marketing department is out to bring the thunder and max out their budgets. (If you’re reading this, you’re probably in marketing too, so you already know.)
Gamification is a highly effective way of cutting through traditional marketing and maximising engagement and focus on your brands and your products, and the online jigsaw puzzle is one of the most on-theme gamification experiences you can customise come December.
Why online jigsaw puzzles are perfect for Christmas marketing
Why online jigsaws? Because what’s more Christmassy than a jigsaw?
It’s a classic family pastime that everyone can get involved in: younger siblings, older cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents etc.
From family pastime to a marketer’s secret weapon
It’s a format that’s universally understood and neatly slots into the visual branding of a classic Christmas: post-dinner with full bellies, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and casually putting together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle on a coffee table that’s looking less and less like it’s going to be big enough…
The online jigsaw puzzle is smaller, will never have any missing pieces, and can be shared digitally so it can be engaged with by anyone on a smartphone or modern web-enabled device.
It also allows brands to keep audiences in their branded experience for longer, and offer opportunities to enforce key messaging, collect data, and direct traffic to strategic web pages.
Did you know? Jigsaw puzzles were originally invented as educational tools, but were used in marketing as early as the 1920s.
How to create Christmas marketing jigsaw puzzles
It’s now easier than ever to customise branded online jigsaw puzzle games, and tailor them to your specific needs with gamification platforms like Drimify.
You simply enter your photo or image that comprises the main jigsaw, apply your branding, copy, tailor the settings to suit your project, and then you can go live and distribute your online puzzle across all relevant channels.
Top Christmas jigsaw puzzle marketing game ideas
Here are our top four ideas for incorporating custom online jigsaw puzzles into your Christmas marketing with possible use cases for you to adapt.
1. Countdown to Christmas with a puzzle advent calendar
Because the build-up to Christmas is longer than other marketing calendar holidays like New Year’s, Halloween, and major sporting events, it’s a real opportunity to push for repeat engagements with your target customers. (Just think about advent calendars and how you start hearing Christmas music and seeing mince pies displayed prominently in mid-November.)
With that in mind, you can use Drimify’s Dynamic Path™ experience builder to create a digital advent calendar that will release different online jigsaw puzzles at set intervals.
This could be made up entirely of jigsaws, delivering a puzzle a day, utilise a recurring sequence of puzzle including the word search, wordle, and 2048 games, or have multiple game types used to deliver a more varied and tailored experience.
This is an ideal approach to take if you have a lot of products to promote, you’re looking to encourage brand loyalty and connection with customers, or you’re looking to encourage repeat purchases across the festive period.
2. Festive photo puzzles for product promotions
The online jigsaw puzzle is ultimately a big reveal to whoever’s putting it together.
This makes it an ideal game engine to customise around new product launches.
Whether it’s the latest tech release, the latest video game, or a much coveted and hyped fashion trainer, an online jigsaw puzzle demonstrating the product at its best in a Christmassy light is a great way to not only reveal it, but to put it front of mind and then redirect customers to its product page.
3. Christmas discount code finder puzzle
Hide generic promotion codes inside digital jigsaw puzzles, and frame it like they’re putting together a Christmas treasure map.
This integrates the promo code into the gameplay (although it can also be repeated in text on the end screen as a reminder), and creates an immediacy to redeem.
This could work online, or just as easily in stores utilising your physical real estate.
4. Xmas marks the spot: Using jigsaw puzzles for phygital and drive to store campaigns
You could use an evolution of idea three as part of a phygital campaign to drive people into your stores over the festive period.
You could hide a clue in your jigsaw puzzle that pertains to a specific area of your stores where there are pop-up stands where they can go to play instant win games to redeem prizes.
The “treasure map” or artefact – however you brand it – engages your target audience on social media and through your marketing newsletter, then they head instore for the second part of the experience.
Pro tip: The online jigsaw puzzle still has to follow best design practices to be fun and satisfying in and of itself. The little clue is an extra piece of the puzzle – so to speak – with the idea that one feeds into another to create brand excitement and unpredictability.
Food for thought: Create multiple jigsaw puzzles with the same clue hidden in them. This way, it can feel more organic from a customer experience perspective, with less chance of people having the same experience..
Tap into the festive spirit with your marketing game campaigns
These ideas are just starting points to apply your own branding and ideas.
The jigsaw is ultimately an established element of a family Christmas – how you use its digital counterpart for your marketing is only limited by your imagination.
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