Each year, Tim Hortons guests anticipate the holiday cup, launched in restaurant immediately following Remembrance Day and a national signal of the beginning of the holiday season.

As in previous years it was critical that the 2014 cup design exude the warmth and cheer of the holidays without being specific to Christmas. So the sweater cup was designed. Inspired by on-trend holiday and winter knit sweaters, the knit idea was a little more whimsical than in previous years. It was a concept that was easily adaptable and applied to several takeout packaging containers, including the cup sleeve, bagel pouch, donut box, muffin box, bakery bags (various sizes) and all three sizes of Timbit boxes. Available in small, medium, large and extra large, each cup size featured a unique sweater design in one of four seasonally inspired colours and prominently displayed the hashtag, #WarmWishes.

Tim Hortons views the six-week holiday period as an opportunity to celebrate with its guests; inspired by the season and not by sales, the cup is typically void of any overt sales messages. Although not a part of the original brief, “Warm Wishes” was originally created to be the tagline for the holiday campaign. Leveraging the message and including it on pack as a hashtag was a social media and feel-good win for the brand.

To introduce the 2014 holiday cups, a 15-second video was shared on Twitter and Facebook, achieving 31,000 views on Facebook, 23,500 views on Twitter and more than 3,200 likes on Instagram.

The social media campaign kicked off when Tim Hortons yarn-bombed one of its sampling trucks by covering it in a giant sweater of its own and driving it through the streets of downtown Toronto. The “truck sweater” created by Toronto knitting group, Lettuce Knit, was later divided into blankets and donated to charity.

Research showed that in previous years, enthusiastic Tim Hortons guests were already sharing photos and talking about their holiday cups on social media. “#WarmWishes” was developed to give guests a reason to feel good about sharing their cup photos online. To drive conversation and spread holiday cheer, guests were encouraged to perform good deeds for each other and share them through various social media channels. In exchange, the company donated 10,000 knit toques to children in need through its Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation.

The campaign achieved a total of 14,780 individual hashtag mentions on Twitter from more than 7,900 users and averaged 290 tweets per day during the six-week program period. It garnered more than 10,000 Instagram posts with the majority of pictures featuring the sweater cup. Many comparisons were made to the Starbucks holiday cup, with the majority of users stating the sweater design was preferred. Overall the campaign surpassed its goal of hashtag uses on Instagram and Twitter by 147%. Excluding the company’s wildly popular “Roll Up The Rim To Win” promotion, “#WarmWishes” was its most successful proactive social media campaign to date.

The cup also inspired other out-of-home initiatives, including a promotional video posted on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The video, featuring a Tim Hortons restaurant in Fort Frances that was outfitted entirely in yarn, received more than 3.6 million online views.