Christmas Presents on Christmas Day from bbc.co.uk

 by Martin Belam, 27 December 2004

On Christmas day this year the BBC homepage re-ran the 24 presents that had been the lunchtime "special" promotions, like an advent calender, in the run up to the holiday. Well, sort of. Some of the original presents, like that promoting the Five Live Sporting Year vote were time sensitive, and couldn't be repeated - they were replaced with promotions specific to some of the BBC One Christmas day television programming.

A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage    A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage
A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage    A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage
A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage    A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage
A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage

I was really impressed with the way the homepage team put this series of December promotions together. They invited nominations from staff all around the BBC for a tag-line and a destination URL with a Christmas feel, and eyedropper converted one of the meeting rooms on the floor where we work into a makeshift photographic studio in order to get the images.

(Although it actually took my a while to realise that the growing pile of presents in the corner of the office wasn't the manifestation of some sort of Secret Santa plot that I had been excluded from)

I also liked the fact that the tags on the presents (on their original outing) were like a numbered limited edition - promising to be "1/24", "2/24", "3/24" etc which gave the whole thing a kind of collectors angle to it.

Still not everybody was happy. Over Christmas breakfast my mum made a point of complaining to me that she had clicked on one of the presents that had led her through to "EastEnders". She didn't think that was very Christmas-y and was "quite disappointed".

Having the presents reappear meant a second outing for one of my nominations - "Little donkey, little donkey"

A present from the bbc.co.uk homepage

This linked through to the Donkey Watch Webcam on the BBC's Devon site.

A screengrab from the BBC's Donkey Watch Webcam

The webcam peers into the New Barn at Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen's Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth. Sadly I've never yet had the opportunity to visit the sanctuary myself, but for an hour at least I was able to help make the donkeys the stars at Christmas.

1 Comment

Haha - I agree with your mum's comment about the Eastenders link...

Keep up to date on my new blog