The holiday marketing campaigns that owned the season gave shoppers a ritual, not a discount. Macy's and Sears built traditions around parades and catalogs, Coca-Cola and Starbucks made a truck and a cup the signal that the season had begun, John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Edeka and Aldi turned Christmas ads into national events, and Patagonia and REI sold a belief by telling shoppers to skip Black Friday. This guide covers 12 campaigns, each sourced.
Last updated October 13, 2026. Results are the companies' or agencies' own figures unless noted, and are labeled as such. For the wider picture, see the 25 beverage brands that got digital marketing right, the 25 corporate communication campaigns that worked and the retail and e-commerce section.
Which holiday campaigns turned a retailer into a tradition?
Four campaigns made the arrival of a parade, a catalog, a truck or a cup the start of the season.
1. Macy's, Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1924
Macy's built a retail event that outlived the store's own advertising. The first parade on November 27, 1924 was called "Macy's Christmas Parade" and aimed at ginning up demand for holiday shopping, according to Britannica. It was meant to welcome Santa Claus to New York, and the first giant balloon, Felix the Cat, came in 1927, Marketplace reported. The 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street featured the parade and tied Macy's to Christmas in the minds of moviegoers, FEE noted. Macy's says the parade now draws an audience of more than 50 million.
Lesson: an event that a retailer owns outlasts any single ad, especially when culture adopts it.
2. Sears, the Christmas Wish Book, 1933
Sears turned a catalog into a family ritual. The first Christmas catalog in 1933 ran 78 pages and grew to 608 pages by 1968, when it was renamed the Wish Book, the Philadelphia Tribune recalled. It reached 834 pages in 1992, and Sears stopped its general catalog in 1993 to focus on the holiday edition, per a Good Housekeeping account. Sears stopped printing it in 2011 and brought back a 120-page edition in 2017 hoping nostalgia would bring shoppers back, CNN Money reported.
Lesson: a tradition keeps value after a business declines, but nostalgia cannot replace a competitive store.
3. Coca-Cola, Holidays Are Coming, 1995
Coca-Cola's Holidays Are Coming turned a convoy of illuminated trucks into the unofficial start of Christmas. The brand's holiday advertising began in 1931, when illustrator Haddon Sundblom's Santa first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, according to the Atlanta History Center. The truck commercial first aired in 1995, created by the agency W.B. Doner with special effects by Industrial Light and Magic, Coca-Cola's own history says. Coca-Cola says a later installment, Christmas Caravan III, was broadcast in more than 100 countries.
In 2025 Coca-Cola released a reimagined version made largely with generative AI, which Social Samosa described as breaking with the brand's long craft tradition.
Lesson: a holiday ad that repeats one image for decades becomes a calendar event the audience expects.
4. Starbucks, the red holiday cup, 1997
Starbucks made a disposable cup a seasonal signal. It first offered holiday cups in 1997 with a jazz-themed design and made them predominantly red in 1999, according to Wikipedia, which also reports that an image of a red cup was shared on social media every 14 seconds in the 2014 season. In 2015 a plain red cup drew an online backlash after evangelist Joshua Feuerstein accused Starbucks of removing Christmas, Fortune reported. Starbucks said the design aimed to "welcome all of our stories," and the cup has been a flashpoint since, including a 2023 walkout by union baristas on Red Cup Day, Chowhound noted.
Lesson: a ritual product invites ownership, and with it, controversy that the brand must be ready to handle.
Which holiday ads became national events?
Five ads turned the release of a film into news, with different ways of measuring the result.
5. John Lewis, Monty the Penguin, 2014
John Lewis's Monty the Penguin is the most documented example of a retailer's Christmas ad driving sales. The department store launched its first Christmas ad in 2007, and the unveiling of each new one has become the unofficial kick-off of the festive period, City A.M. reported. In 2014 John Lewis spent £7 million on Christmas marketing, £1 million of it on making the ad, AdNews reported.
The agency adam&eveDDB's Eurobest entry says the campaign generated £132 million of extra sales and £33 million of extra profit, a payback of nearly 8 to 1, and that John Lewis took £175 million in a single week for the first time. Those are the agency's own figures. The campaign also put a Monty's Den in each of the retailer's 41 stores, per another Eurobest entry.
Lesson: a Christmas ad earns its budget when the story reaches the shop floor, from characters to products to store experiences.
6. Sainsbury's, Christmas is for Sharing, 2014
Sainsbury's used a war story to raise money. The ad, made by AMV BBDO with the Royal British Legion, dramatized the 1914 Christmas truce and ended with a chocolate bar sold in stores for £1, with all profits going to the charity, The Drum reported. D&AD says more than one million bars sold, raising over £500,000, and that it was the UK's most watched ad on YouTube in 2014. The ad also drew complaints that it used the memory of the war for commercial gain, ClickZ noted, and the New Statesman asked whether the tie-in did enough to answer them.
Lesson: pairing a sensitive story with a charity partner and a transparent profit pledge helps, but does not remove the risk.
7. Edeka, Heimkommen, 2015
A German supermarket made the most shared Christmas ad of its year. Jung von Matt's film, published on November 28, 2015, shows a grandfather who fakes his own death to bring his family home, and had more than 20 million YouTube views by December 2, according to Wikipedia. Unruly data showed it had been shared 2.39 million times, more than John Lewis's 1.3 million, B&T reported. The agency's Cannes Lions entry claims almost 160 million views and a 20% rise in Edeka's fan community, per the entry, and the song reached number 43 on the German charts, The Drum noted.
Lesson: an emotional story about a real tension, here the lonely older relative, travels farther than a product claim.
8. Aldi, Kevin the Carrot, 2016
Aldi UK's Kevin the Carrot gave a discount grocer a Christmas character, and the sales results were large. The ad launched on November 7, 2016, narrated by actor Jim Broadbent, with a £2.99 soft toy sold in stores, The Drum reported. Aldi said the campaign lifted December sales 15.1% and brought in one million new customers, who delivered £1 billion in extra sales over 2017, according to Marketing Week.
The campaign's 2022 Gold Effie submission, as summarized by System1, claimed 54% value share growth over six years, £618 million in incremental revenue and a 241% return on marketing investment. The agency McCann's Cannes Lions entry says the soft toy sold out within 30 minutes. These are the company's and agency's own figures.
Lesson: a recurring character lets a challenger brand compete with a bigger rival's Christmas without matching its budget.
9. Apple, Misunderstood, 2013
Apple turned a product demo into a holiday short film. The ad, from TBWA\Media Arts Lab and Park Pictures, follows a teenager who seems glued to his iPhone 5s at a family Christmas and then shows a movie he shot of the family, and it won the 2014 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial over ads from GE, Nike and Budweiser, Mactrast reported. It launched about a week and a half before Christmas with a buy on The Voice finale, iSpot said. Ad tester Ace Metrix scored it high for likeability but noted it could have showcased the hardware more.
Lesson: the best product demo can feel like a story, but it still has to show the product.
Which holiday campaigns won by doing something different?
Three campaigns used humor or restraint to stand out from the discounts.
10. Kmart, Ship My Pants and holiday spots, 2013
Kmart used a pun to reach shoppers who had written it off. The retailer and its agency Draftfcb spent about $85,000 in media on "Ship My Pants," which drew more than 15 million views in eight days, according to the agency's Cannes Lions entry. A holiday follow-up, "Show Your Joe," drew more than 16 million YouTube views, JCK reported. The agency's later entry claims a 50% increase in store-to-home transactions, but outside coverage noted that the viral ads did not clearly lift sales, with RetailWire reporting that sales continued to flounder.
Lesson: viral reach changes how people talk about a brand, but it cannot repair stores or assortments.
11. Patagonia, Don't Buy This Jacket, 2011
Patagonia ran an anti-ad on the biggest shopping day of the year. On November 25, 2011 it placed a full-page New York Times ad with the headline "Don't buy this jacket," which cost about $57,000, former CEO Casey Sheahan told author David Gelles, who recounted the story. The Common Threads pledge gained 13,000 signatures in the week after the ad, against 8,000 since its September launch, Outside reported. Patagonia's sales rose about 30% the following year to $543 million, according to Case Studied, though the sales growth cannot be tied to the ad alone.
Lesson: a brand that backs a values message with real programs, such as repair and resale, gets credit for it.
12. REI, #OptOutside, 2015
REI's #OptOutside sold a belief on the day retailers sell the most. The co-op announced on October 26, 2015 that it would close all 143 stores on Black Friday and pay its 12,000 employees to spend the day outside, Retail TouchPoints reported. It told its 5.5 million members by email and launched the hashtag, with the agency Venables Bell and Partners credited on WARC.
CEO Jerry Stritzke said REI would "rather be in the mountains than in the aisles," as reported at the time. Cone Communications noted that Patagonia's earlier "Don't Buy This Jacket" had set a precedent for brands opting out of Black Friday. No sales results from the campaign are cited here.
Lesson: a values-led move on a peak shopping day earns attention that discounts cannot, but it needs a brand that can afford to say no.
What do the strongest holiday campaigns share?
The strongest holiday campaigns build a ritual the audience waits for. Macy's parade, Sears's catalog, Coca-Cola's trucks and Starbucks's cups signal the season, John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Edeka and Aldi return each year with a new story, and Patagonia and REI turned a day off into a tradition. Each tied the creative to something the company actually owned, such as a parade route, a catalog, a mascot or a policy. Many figures above are the companies' or agencies' own, so treat them as claims.
A brand planning a holiday campaign should decide what ritual it can own and plan for the second year before the first one runs.
