Irish People Surprise Their Families with Emotional Christmas Messages on TV

Irish An Post has launched its new Christmas campaign called ‘Send Love This Christmas’ featuring surprise messages from Irish people who won’t  be with their families for Christmas this year. 

Christmas can be a difficult time for many people, in this day and age. Families are spread out all over the world and many find themselves apart on the big day. An Post wanted to show that nowhere is out of reach this Christmas and that they can go the extra mile to deliver feelings of love, support and connection to all.

Rather than running typical Christmas ads, An Post dedicated this year’s campaign to the Irish people, at home and abroad, who can’t be with their loved ones this festive season. As opposed to traditional casting, An Post and JWT Folk reached out to real Irish people, to give them the opportunity to send a special Christmas message to their nearest and dearest, by surprising them on national television.

JWT Folk, who have previously created the brand’s ‘World Wide Open’ campaign, have developed a campaign which features the real life stories of expat Alison Griffin, Leading Seaman Katie O’Leary of the Irish Naval Service and the recently wedded Conor Biddle and Sean Smyth.

Commenting about the campaign, Fiona Heffernan, commercial director for mail at An Post said: “Letters and parcels, to and from loved ones near and far, are at the very heart of Christmas in Ireland.  The real customers’ stories featured in this year’s An Post ads reflect the reality of life for so many families this Christmas, and make for compelling viewing too.  They really bring home the power of personal messages in parcels, letters and cards as they travel across the country and around the world, reinforcing human connection and the expression of love at Christmas time.”

Commenting about the campaign, JWT Folk’s head of art, Keith Lawler added :“All of us can relate to not being able to spend Christmas with loved ones sometimes, be it at home in Ireland or elsewhere around the world. We are an incredibly close knit community of people culturally, and those feelings of love, support and belonging are hugely important to all of us, even more so at Christmas than at any other time of the year.”

“We wanted to offer a few people the opportunity to surprise their families and friends by coming on TV and delivering a message directly to them in a totally unexpected way. We hope that their families don't get too much of a shock! Christmas ads are brilliant to work on and it was a pleasure to do something different this year with An Post. We worked with a fantastic new production company called Bold Puppy and are delighted with the result.”

The campaign will run across TV, VOD, radio, digital and An Post social channels.#SendLove