Every November the marketing world starts arguing about this year's Christmas ad. But a lot of the Christmas ad campaigns we still remember come from the 2000s, when YouTube had just launched and Instagram didn't exist.
So I lined up six of them and looked at two things most best-of lists skip: what they cost and whether they actually worked. Spoiler: almost nobody publishes sales numbers.
Black Friday gets its own article, because it's a completely different game: here are the most creative Black Friday campaigns of the last 5 years.
Six Christmas campaigns people still remember
2005, Bauli: one melody for twenty years
I'm Italian, so I'm starting at home. Bauli is an Italian brand of Christmas cakes, and any Italian reading “A Natale puoi” already has the jingle stuck in their head. First came the BaBaBa with the kids, then the jingle. The song is by Francesco Vitaloni and it's already in the 2005 ad below.
What matters is what came next. In 2020 they had consumers rewrite it, and in 2025 they were still using it to launch a new product (all three sources are in Italian). No crazy idea. Just the same melody, repeated until it became Christmas for an entire country.
“Buono come te”, Christmas 2005.
Mid-2000s, Marks & Spencer: not just food
Marks & Spencer is a British retail chain. A sultry voice, slow motion on a chocolate pudding and one line: “this is not just food”. That's it. The “Not just any food” campaign ran for six years and changed how people saw M&S food, Christmas included. The number you'll see quoted is +3,500% in sales for that pudding. Take it with a pinch of salt: it's a Guardian quote picked up by another outlet.
A real product, no discount. You just get hungry.
The same line, in a more recent version.
2006, OfficeMax: your face on a dancing elf
A US office supply chain. Not exactly the sexiest brand in the world. You upload a photo, your face lands on a dancing elf, you send the video to your friends. Done. From December 1, 2006 to January 7, 2007, Elf Yourself got more than 36 million visits and 11 million elves. The year after: 193 million visits and 123 million elves.
You were the star of the campaign, and you did the word of mouth for free, for a laugh. Almost twenty years later, anyone chasing virality is still trying to remake this.
The video in which OfficeMax tells the story of the campaign.
2006, Irn-Bru: 105 years to make a Christmas ad
Irn-Bru is Scotland's orange soda. In 2006 it made its first Christmas ad in 105 years. The idea? It took The Snowman, the 1982 cartoon that's close to sacred in the UK, and parodied it: the boy doesn't want to share his Irn-Bru with the snowman. And they brought it back on air years later.
They didn't need to invent a world. There was already one everybody knew.
The 2006 ad.
2007, Boots: talking to one person
Boots is a big UK health and beauty chain, and it was under pressure: new competitors, falling market share. It decided to go after the customers worth the most, women aged 25 to 44. With the agency Mother it made “Here Come the Girls”. And one thing says a lot: it ran for four years.
Here Come the Girls, 2007.
2007 and 2009, John Lewis: how a yearly event is born
John Lewis is a British department store, and today its Christmas ad is a national event: think Super Bowl ad, but for December. It started like this: in 2007 Shadows, by Lowe London, stacked gifts casting the shadow of the person they're for. In 2009 Adam & Eve arrived: kids playing with grown-up gifts over a folk cover of Sweet Child O' Mine.
The creative is lovely, but what interests me is something else: they did it again every year. You can't buy a yearly event in one season.
Shadows, 2007.
The Feeling, 2009.
How much do brands really spend at Christmas?
Few of them will give you the number. The most solid figure is British: every autumn the Advertising Association and WARC estimate what advertising is worth in the last quarter of the year. For 2026 they're at £14 billion.
Read these as orders of magnitude. They're forecasts published year by year, not a recalculated series: this year's report talks about £1.06 billion more than last Christmas, so 2025 has been revised upward.
In the US, the cleanest numbers are on the sales side. NRF expects $1.01 trillion in retail sales this November and December, up 4.2%, with about half of that growth coming from higher prices. Adobe expects $275.1 billion online from November 1 to December 31, up 6.7%. That's the money brands are chasing. It doesn't tell you what they spend to get it.
And a single campaign? Even fewer numbers, and often they're press estimates:
In 2007 John Lewis put in 24 times what Irn-Bru had spent the year before. But look at 2015: out of £7 million, about one went to TV. A Christmas budget isn't only buying media.
Why a Christmas budget doesn't work like a Black Friday budget
Almost no brand says how it splits budget between the two. But one data point shows why they're two different jobs: when people search.
“Christmas gifts” stays above half of its peak for 5 weeks. “Black friday” does it for 1. Christmas gives you time to tell a story and show it more than once. Black Friday is over in days: more on that in the Black Friday campaigns article. And Christmas has a hard stop of its own: your shipping deadlines.
Did they work? What can actually be verified
A lot of lists talk about these campaigns as if they were all hits. I look at the results, and I'll tell you how much I trust them:
| Campaign | Result | Source | How much I trust it |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Lewis, 2012-2015 | More than 8 in profit for every 1 invested, sales up 37% | IPA, 2016 Grand Prix | A lot: it's an effectiveness award, even if the case is written by the people who did the work |
| Boots, from 2007 | Stopped the slide in market share, Boots stays the leader | IPA | Fairly: the percentages aren't public |
| Boots, Christmas 2010 | Gift sales up 8% | Thinkbox | Fairly: it doesn't say where the sales figure comes from |
| OfficeMax, 2006-2007 | From 36 to 193 million visits | MediaPost | A lot on traffic. No public number on sales |
Irn-Bru and Bauli have no public sales results, and the +3,500% for M&S needs that pinch of salt. If someone tells you a creative campaign always works, ask to see the numbers.
Six campaigns to put under the tree
| Campaign | Year | The idea in one line | The number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bauli, A Natale puoi | 2005 | One melody for twenty years | None |
| Marks & Spencer | Mid-2000s | “Not just food” | +3,500% on the pudding (pinch of salt) |
| OfficeMax, Elf Yourself | 2006 | Your face on a dancing elf | 36 million visits, then 193 |
| Irn-Bru, Snowman | 2006 | A parody of a sacred cartoon | £250,000 invested |
| Boots, Here Come the Girls | 2007 | Talking to one audience | No public percentage |
| John Lewis | 2007 and 2009 | A yearly event | More than 8 in profit for 1 invested (2012-2015) |
What can I use if I run an online store?
You don't need a John Lewis budget. But there are three things I'd steal:
- Start from something that already exists. Irn-Bru took a cartoon everyone knew. Bauli, a melody. It's cheaper than inventing a world.
- Repeat. Bauli and John Lewis didn't have one idea and move on. They kept doing it until it was theirs.
- Use the time. At Christmas you have weeks, not days. Use them to reach the same people more than once, and always check what you can afford with your break-even ROAS. If you want an idea that's ready to go, start with bundles and gift boxes.
Which Christmas campaign do you still remember?
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