1. What are your festive lighting and decorative goals?

Do you want to create a warm and welcoming festive lighting experience that makes people want to stay around for longer? Do you want to create an edgy, contemporary, and wildly “different” holiday display that will turn your brand into a household name? Or do you have a vision for a wholistic Christmas campaign where lights and decoration are part of a larger online and offline holiday experience?

Being clear about your goals and how you’ll measure your success is a great place to start.

For example, in 2017/2018, Rodovre Centrum in Denmark worked with our team in MK Illumination Denmark to create a festive lighting display that formed the backbone of their online and offline “Bad Santa” campaign. Read the story to see what they did.

2. Who is your audience and what’s likely to excite and delight them?

If you’re a high-end retail space, perhaps a rich, opulent gold and warm-white lighting display will turn heads, like the Golden Dragon at The Shops at Crystals, Las Vegas.  

If most of your visitors are fashion-conscious women, a fashion theme filled with clever motifs and bold colors might appeal – Mahon Point’s 2018 festive fashion theme is a great example of this.  

If you want to attract families, fill your space with age-appropriate motifs, photo points, places to take a break, and perhaps a few interactive features, like those at Moscow’s Riga Mall.

Creating something that resonates with your audience will help you achieve your festive campaign goals.

© The Shops at Crystals Las Vegas / Western Design LLC / Celtic Photography

3. What parts of your space do you want to decorate?

If you have a shopping center, do you want to create a festive atmosphere inside only? What about your center’s façade or parking area? Do you have any outdoor spaces that would be the perfect place for a light-filled market?

If you want to add Christmas cheer to your city, do you want to focus purely on overhead street lighting, or do you want to create a magical holiday experience by adding light and décor to your city center, pedestrian areas, and parks?

If you have a corporate building, is a giant Christmas tree filled with light and color in front of the building enough, or do you want to add sparkle to your lobby, too?

Whatever space you want to decorate, do you want to go wild and decorate everything, or do you want to have a few statement pieces?

4. Static, animated, or interactive?

Static light is classic, but to make it “pop”, you might want to incorporate some animated features to add interest and “wow-effect”. Or you can take your festive lighting to the next level and make it interactive: imagine a Christmas tree that lights up when a couple exchanges a kiss beneath its branches, or an extraordinary light sculpture that talks or tells a story at the touch of a button, or an abstract tree that starts to sing and light up as people approach it.

The possibilities are endless…

5. What’s your budget?

If you have a budget, be realistic about what you can do with the funds available.

If you don’t have a budget, there are many creative ways to generate funds, particularly if you understand the benefits of festive lighting and can recruit businesses and individuals who will benefit from the investment.  

If you’re not sure how to go about this, get in touch – we’ve worked with thousands of customers over the years and can give you some ideas that we know work.

What next?

If you have some initial answers, but you’re not sure where to go from here, the best thing to do is to sit down with one of our local MK Illumination teams to discuss what’s possible.

And if you don’t have any answers, not to worry. It’s still worth getting in touch and we’ll take you through all the questions, one by one.