Five Stars for Crayola’s Colorful Canine Christmas

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What are the colors of Christmas? Snowy white, Santa Claus red and Christmas tree green, you might say. But with their clever (and educational!) 2025 holiday commercial, “Blue Christmas”, Crayola and agency Dentsu Creative are out to make audiences think a little differently.

The ad rests on a bit of animal science – Dogs don’t have the same color receptors we do, so they can’t see red and green. From this nugget of knowledge, Crayola and Dentsu spin an enchanting and original festive tale. We see a little girl, looking forward to Christmas but worried that her dog Pickle isn’t feeling the holiday vibe. She starts earnestly coloring and making her own blue decorations; at first her parents are baffled but then they, and her kid sister, join in too. Finally Grandma arrives to find a house bedecked in blue and a happy Pickle, and that’s when the girl explains why she’s done it all. Now the dog can understand that something special’s happening too.

It’s not easy to come up with a new spin on holiday advertising, and Crayola have done it in a way that subtly showcases what their brand is about: human creativity. Crayola is a brand for amateur creators of all ages who want to bring a little color to their lives, and their Christmasses. The story of Pickle and his owner brings that to life in an emotional way designed to make the audience feel uplifted and happy.

Do the audience feel that way? That’s why we have ad testing. We ran Crayola’s “Blue Christmas” commercial through the Test Your Ad platform, which uses a real audience to predict an ad’s potential to drive long-term growth, short-term sales and measures how well-branded it is.

Holiday ads bring out the best in brands, and so the average Test Your Ad scores are far higher at this time of year. But in emotional response and long-term potential, Crayola excels. The average US holiday ad scores 4.0-Stars, and Crayola hits an exceptional 5.1-Star Rating. For a brand like Crayola, who doesn’t run year-round campaigns like some festive advertisers, that long-term impact is highly valuable. The colorful story of Pickle’s Christmas is the kind of thing that will stick in the minds of viewers and create long-term positive impact.

Why is the ad so good? It understands the power of storytelling very well. There’s a lot of human connection and non-verbal communication, which grabs the attention of the right side of our brains. That sense of togetherness increases as more of the family gets drawn in to the creative activity. And the ad keeps the why of it all as a puzzle until the end, giving us the answers we want and making sure the ad ends on a peak. Like the family’s blue decorations and their canine audience, “Blue Christmas” gets our attention by doing something creatively different.