Christmas Unwrapped: Advertising Insights for 2025 Holiday Planning
The 2024 Christmas season has been unlike any other, with UK and US advertisers reaching new heights. Brands have stood out in unexpected categories, and debates about the role of AI in advertising have sparked widespread discussions. The creativity this year has been so powerful, it’s melting even the coldest hearts. Whether these ads made you laugh, cry, or think, one thing is clear—you felt something. And that’s what matters most. The more emotion we experience, the more likely we are to take action. So, we’ve compiled the top insights and recommendations from 2024 to help you plan for next year. Here are some valuable gifts from System1 to ensure 2025 is another year packed with emotion—and commercial impact!
The Bigger Picture
Before we dive into the details, let’s first look at the overall festive landscape, starting with average Star Ratings. In 2024, UK Christmas ads performed similarly to 2023, averaging a strong 4.3 Stars, while US holiday ads averaged 3.6 Stars. Although the US rating is notably lower, 2024 marked the fifth consecutive year that US holiday ads outperformed Super Bowl ads. While US holiday advertising may not have the same spectacle as the UK’s, it’s still a season worth attention—and perhaps it’s time to focus more on this space.
Remarkably, the US also surpassed the UK in the total number of ads aired, with more ads achieving a and exceptional Spike Ratings than ever before. But let’s not confuse quantity with quality—more ads doesn’t necessarily mean better results. In fact, while many Christmas ads achieved strong long- and short-term impact, around half of all ads aired in November failed to generate any short-term impact. These ads often relied on rational, sales-driven messaging, featuring flat backdrops, heavy voiceovers, and explicit calls to action.
The most effective ads in both markets, in terms of both long- and short-term impact, prioritized brand-building and “showmanship.” A focus on character, storytelling, and scenery drove stronger results across the board. Ads that achieved a 3 Star rating or higher also saw above-average sales potential.
The most notable trend this year, however, was consistency. We saw a significant number of brands either re-airing past creative or repurposing brand characters and codes. 2024 marked the most consistent Christmas season yet, with the impact of Compound Creativity taking hold. The most consistent brands achieved greater commercial potential, including Cadbury and VCCP with their re-air of “Secret Santa Postal Service,” and Coca-Cola’s reimagined AI version of “Holidays Are Coming.” These ads generated some of the highest creative consistency scores and reached new heights in effectiveness, as measured by System1’s Star Rating.
Unwrapping Insights
Every year, we analyze the top-performing ads of the season to uncover the features that made them powerful emotional drivers—from celebrating everyday heroes to ensuring cross-channel cohesion. Festive success comes down to well-thought-out strategies, not just ho-ho-hope! Our 12 Gifts of Christmas report unwraps the 2024 festive landscape, offering examples and recommendations to fuel your 2025 planning. For now, here are a few highlights to inspire you into the New Year!
1. Brands Are Magnets, Not Mirrors
One of the most talked-about discussions this Christmas was the absence of male characters in John Lewis and Saatchi & Saatchi’s festive campaign “The Gifting Hour”. Some pointed out that the ad seemed to target women exclusively, sparking an interesting debate that we were eager to explore. After testing the ad with a nationally representative sample of consumers, we analyzed emotional resonance by gender splits. Despite the online conversation, we found very little difference in the ad’s performance between male and female audiences. This highlighted an important takeaway: it’s resonance, not relevance, that truly matters. It also reminded us that sometimes online chatter can sound louder than it really is.
Ads succeed when they tell authentic, human-centered stories, not when they try to be everything to everyone. The Gifting Hour may have focused on the story of sisters, but the themes—such as the excitement and stress of finding the perfect gift, the shared memories of Christmas, and the childhood nostalgia that fills the holiday season—are universally human and relatable. In fact, this campaign became the highest-scoring John Lewis ad on System1’s ratings since 2019, with both strong long-term potential and exceptional short-term impact.
The ad was dynamic, eliciting a variety of emotions—from joy and sadness to even some contempt. But by the end, the resolving moment between the sisters left viewers with positive feelings. This technique of creating emotional resonance isn’t unique to John Lewis this year. Amazon’s “Midnight Opus” similarly centers on human connections, while Hobby Lobby’s US holiday campaign prioritized family and togetherness. Sometimes, simplicity and universal themes are the key to success.
2. Beloved Icons Bring Joy
Familiarity is a powerful ally to creativity. Through our work with the IPA, we’ve seen the compounded commercial impact of consistency, and at Christmas, this truth becomes even more resonant. Year after year, we return to the same beloved movies, reminisce on cherished childhood memories, and embrace the cultural significance of the season. This nostalgia creates a unique opportunity for brands to connect deeply with audiences, and this year’s top-performing ads are proof of how tapping into cultural and nostalgic cues can drive commercial impact.
Take Twinkly, for example, enlisting Chevy Chase’s iconic Clark Griswold, or Sainsbury’s partnering with the Roald Dahl Company to reimagine the BFG. Both ads sparked an immediate surge in positive emotion as soon as a beloved character or cultural cue appeared on screen. Why? Because familiarity quite literally breeds contentment.
One standout example of leveraging cultural significance and beloved characters this year was Etsy, with their global campaign featuring a live-action Waldo. For many, Waldo (or Wally, as he’s known in the UK) sparks fond childhood memories—hours spent searching for that striped, spectacled character, or perhaps even unwrapping the latest Where’s Waldo edition in a Christmas stocking.
Etsy’s campaign was brimming with humor, wit, and self-awareness. It struck a pool of emotions: we empathize, we laugh, and we ultimately smile as Waldo is humanized and gifted something meaningful. Crucially, this campaign is a textbook example of building brand connection. Featuring cultural icons or nostalgic cues only works when they’re relevant to your brand. Otherwise, you risk confusion or neutrality, which stifles both short- and long-term impact.
Etsy chose Waldo strategically to communicate a powerful message: their platform caters to unique personalities and individuals. It’s personalized shopping, even for well-known icons. By doing so, they remind us of an important lesson during the festive season: it’s not just about what we buy, but who we’re buying for—on a deeper, more meaningful level.
3. Make Sure They Know It’s You
Christmas is a season rich with emotional creativity, as we’ve discussed earlier—brands put their best foot forward to craft campaigns that drive both short-term impact and long-term gains. However, this creates an intensely competitive landscape, where brands fiercely compete to be noticed and, most importantly, remembered.
Supermarkets, in particular, face one of the most competitive festive categories—especially in the UK, where multiple brands consistently achieve top rankings. So, how do you cut through the noise and ensure that the emotional resonance of your campaign is attributed to your brand, rather than the category as a whole?
This is where Fluency, System1’s measure of total brand recognition, becomes a key topic. While the top ads in the UK and US achieve exceptional short-term and long-term commercial results, Fluency tends to be lower, with around 10% of consumers unable to identify which brand the ad is for by the end. This presents a significant challenge for brands, especially since many are hesitant to place a prominent logo upfront for fear of compromising the emotional appeal. In the UK, where many Christmas ads run over 40 seconds, creativity is crucial. Ensuring that audiences recognize the ad as being for your brand requires frequent, early, and repeated brand cues. However, few brands take this approach, fearing it might diminish the build-up and tension of the narrative.
Fortunately, there are creative loopholes, with consistency being the most prominent. Brands that re-air ads or repurpose characters and soundtracks during Christmas drive increased fluency year after year. Coca-Cola’s “Holidays are Coming” is a prime example—it incorporates multiple cues and, before 2024, had aired the exact same ad every year since 1995. This year, the campaign was repurposed, but key elements remained intact: the iconic Coca-Cola trucks, their festive design, the bold red imagery, and the familiar “Holidays are Coming” soundtrack, which has become synonymous with the brand. This is a perfect example of tapping into multiple brand codes rather than relying on just one.
We also saw brands incorporate year-round brand characters, such as the Target dog, the Moonpig pig, and Very Group’s pink flamingos. These characters are owned by the brand and embedded throughout communications, enabling easy and quick brand recognition.
One of my personal favorite techniques, often overlooked, is the use of store settings. Take Asda, Wegmans, or even John Lewis this year—these brands set their holiday ads within their high street stores. Not only does this serve as a constant reminder of their physical presence, but the brand is reinforced in every scene through background imagery or employee uniforms. Aldi UK also leverages a consistent narrator, another often-underestimated technique. Distinctive voices, especially those with unique accents or tones, can create strong emotional appeal and serve as effective brand cues.
Thinkbox recently published a report with Dr. Ali Goode titled Earning Attention, which explored how audiences are more likely to remember things they hear. This is because many people step away from their screens during live TV viewing or shift their attention to their phones. Audio, therefore, becomes a powerful memory tool. Brands should consider building a narrative voice, jingle, or soundtrack into their communications consistently to enhance recall.
Create With Confidence
This just scratches the surface of how to win during the holidays. For the full 12 Gifts, download the report and check out our 2023 Holiday archives for additional insights!
But before I wrap up, there’s one way to ensure your campaigns achieve their intended outcomes: pre-testing. At System1, we test everything from script to finished film and have collaborated with many of the Christmas advertisers featured in the 12 Gifts of Christmas to maximize their commercial impact. Brands that pre-test with System1 typically see a +1.1 higher Star Rating (long-term impact) and make the leap from strong to exceptional short-term sales at Christmas.
And that challenge of brand recognition? System1 pre-tested ads enjoy an +8% advantage, as brands can pinpoint the exact moments when their brand becomes noticeable and determine whether there’s room to increase prominence. Our Test Your Ad Guidance modules are here to support your creative process, offering actionable recommendations to optimise your campaign performance.
