40 million Advent calendars are sold in Germany every year. And they are no longer just for children: over a quarter of Germans buy an Advent calendar for themselves – often branded Advent calendars.

But are such branded Advent calendars just short-term sales promotion measures or valuable touchpoints that bring the brand to life and strengthen it in the long term?

Using the Brand Touchpoint Quality model, master’s students at the HWR Berlin, led by Prof. Dr. Carsten Baumgarth, examined and evaluated 14 Advent calendars (a total of 107 evaluations). Not only was the evaluation of Advent calendars a meaningful and motivating exercise for a course in the master’s program “Brand Management,” but the evaluation and additional expert assessment by Prof. Baumgarth also yielded some insights:

• Branded Advent calendars remain popular with German consumers. In many cases, the calendars are purchased for personal use.
• Advent calendars can and should be much more than mere sales promotion tools and should be interpreted and designed much more as powerful brand touchpoints.
• Shelf power: Ensured by size, colorfulness, and (unusual) format. Historical examples can serve as inspiration.
• Usability: Ensure that the doors can be opened easily and that all items do not slip or become damaged during transport; inclusive design (e.g., Braille) is an interesting design approach.
• Experience: most important driver with the dimensions of emotion, inspiration, multimodality, surprise, becoming active, and social experience; however, in the study, this BTQ dimension received the lowest average rating.
• Experience: Variety in content, surprise (e.g., competitions, vouchers), exclusive content (e.g., merchandise), inspiration through interesting information (e.g., back side, QR codes), opportunities for participation, and becoming active yourself are some design approaches for enhancing the experience.
• Brand: Recognizability of key brand assets and brand values are the second most important driver. Despite all the brand codes, the calendar should also include “Christmas” images and themes.
• The price-performance ratio should be perceived as “fair” from the customer’s point of view.
• The BTQ model can be used as a frame of reference for the development of Advent calendars; at the same time, the BTQ model can be used as an approach for evaluation by experts and/or consumers.

We would like to thank the following companies for sending us Advent calendars: Kloster Kitchen, Laverana, Primavera, Ronnefeldt, Sawade, Seeberger, and Teekanne.

The complete study presentation can be downloaded here (sorry only in German).