Most modern Christmas traditions have their origins in Germany, from Christmas trees and stockings filled with toys to nutcrackers and Krampus. In kind, German bakers started making gingerbread houses in the 19th century, inspired by the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel."

Like that story's cannibalistic underpinnings, there's always been something off about gingerbread people living in houses made of their same material as their bodies. That fact, which has popped up in web comics and viral tweets, is at the heart of the latest campaign from Snyder's of Hanover.

The Campbell Soup Company pretzel brand last month launched a campaign to encourage consumers to build pretzel houses, not gingerbread houses. Along with a microsite and other social activations, the effort includes a 30-second spot for YouTube and social video uses the style of PSAs to poke fun at a gingerbread person's housing dilemma.

For Saatchi & Saatchi, the holiday campaign came out of an effort to find a seasonal moment when pretzels could shine. Gingerbread houses — which now come in pre-made sets and often go uneaten — presented not just a lane for product but also creative.

"When you think about it too much, essentially the houses are made of the same material that [gingerbread people] are. That kind of one-sentence insight is not something that you come across in every creative idea that you have," said Dustin Tomes, executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi.

The insight was simple, but also a bit dark and macabre. Thankfully for the agency, every stakeholder in the process, from production partners to integrated agency teams to Campbell's found the idea to be a surprising provocation. But resonating with younger audiences that share that type of humor while being authentic to the brand is a challenge faced by many marketers.

"How do you find something that shows that we understand what they find funny and entertaining, but also knowing that we have brand standards and our own tone of voice, and just making sure that we're threading that needle?" Tomes explained. "The tone of Snyder's is meant to be fun, playful and unexpected, so we tried to make it really fun with a little bit of tension to it — finding that balance in terms of the line to walk, and making sure that tonally, it felt right for the Snyder's brand."

Puppeteers, Pinterest and more

That balance is on display in the PSA-style ad, which builds a solemn moment of drama before revealing the playful idea at its core. The agency was careful to borrow the look and feel of PSAs as a creative device without making light of any similar ads that highlight real-world issues. It also updated the look of classic Christmas animation like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by having the gingerbread man puppeteered by a person in a blue-screen suit.

"We found that the movement that they were able to evoke and breathe into this character from a human that's actually using the puppet itself felt superior to a CG approach," Tomes said. "We shared this work internally at the agency and I think people were really surprised that it was an actual puppeteer."

To follow the PSA spot's call to action, Saatchi and Snyder's built a website that includes instructions and videos that show how to build pretzel houses, whether basic or more complex. Elsewhere, the team looked for opportunities to "hijack" other trends and conversations. Content on Pinterest follows initial inspiration drawn from the platform.

"We tried to position things in a way that it's something that you would find on Pinterest, so that it doesn't necessarily stick out like a sore thumb within the board, because we know when people are engaging on social platforms, the minute it screams ad, the quicker they are going to want to scroll by that," Tomes explained.

Content on TikTok uses a similarly authentic approach, using the language of the platform ("I was today years old"). It also ties into a preexisting style of content: one video shows a gingerbread man detailing "3 things about my Snyder's pretzel cabin that just makes sense" — all variations of "it's not made of me."

"When you get into these social spaces, you have a little bit more latitude to kind of 'go there' versus something that's a little bit more of a broad execution that's going to be speaking to a more mass audience," Tomes said.

"Anytime you put something out in the world, you're no longer in control of it. We were sure to be very diligent so that no one could miss what our intentions were, which was just to make it playful, fun, entertaining and nothing else. We feel really good about where that netted out.”