newsletter: celebrating the best in 2025 holiday creative

December 1, 2025

The holidays bring out the best in creative, just in time for this critical buying period. To that end, we have put together our annual list of favourite spots from around the world (plus two bonus conversation-starter ads). Our top commercials this year hail from Canada, the UK, and the US, with retailers taking up 6 of the 8 spots. The ads range from emotional to fantastical to highly unrealistic romcom (in the best way!), but one thing they have in common is they all put us in the holiday spirit.

Let us know your favourite — we’d love to hear from you!

IKEA Canada “Twelve Days”
IKEA Canada brings the “Twelve Days of Christmas” carol to life, but instead of it bringing holiday cheer, it causes amusing chaos. The solution? Getting a gift “they actually need.” Produced in both French and English.

ALDI “Kevin the Carrot’s stag do has gone pear-shaped!”
Everyone’s favourite British carrot is back! This time it’s Kevin’s wedding … but his stag party got a little out of hand and he might not make it to the alter on time! Can the bride “romaine” calm?

John Lewis “Where Love Lives”
Communication can be hard, especially through the growing pains of a father and son relationship, which is why we think the tagline from this spot is the best of the bunch — “if you can’t find the words, find the gift.”

ASDA “A Very Merry Grinchmas”
The Grinch’s heart grows three sizes when he discovers the deals at ASDA in this light-hearted spot about being cost conscious. Grinch goes from “no, no, no” to “here we go,” declaring “My Christmassy cheer is flying. My wallet’s no longer crying.”

Waitrose “The Perfect Gift”
An average Joe meeting Keira Knightley at a cheese counter and falling in love? Must be Waitrose. We love this outlandish romcom ad where dreams really do come true (a Christmas miracle)!

Google “It’s Pixel, actually”
Google — big TV advertisers — have developed a great spot based on holiday favourite “Love Actually.” The boy actor from the film is all grown up and enjoying fans’ attention, when in fact “it’s not you Thomas, it’s Pixel’s 100x zoom, actually.”

LEGO “HELLO! If it’s Play You’re Looking For? Look no further…”
LEGO comes to life with a rousing rendition of Lionel Richie’s “Hello” to re-connect a brother and a sister and remind us all that if it’s play we’re looking for, look no further than LEGO.

Tesco “That’s What Makes It Christmas”
This fun spot highlights the realities of the holidays — grandpa saying something inappropriate, kids fighting, competitive game-play — but Tesco reminds us that “Christmas isn’t perfect, but that’s what makes it Christmas.”

And two ads that got people talking:

Amazon “Joy Ride” (2023 re-run)
Amazon have several holiday spots running this year (4 at last count), but our favourite is the 2023 ad that’s back on air, showing us that the thrill of a “joy ride” never gets old (plus we love seeing tech giants leverage the power of TV). Mark Ritson is a big fan of re-running popular creative; for his thoughts, read his write up.

Coca-Cola “Holidays Are Coming”
This AI-generated ad took 70,000 prompts and 100 people to make it commercial “ready.” This year’s version has replaced people with animals, but is otherwise very similar to last year’s creative. We’re not convinced by this AI execution, but it did test well with viewers. What do you think?

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season and hope to see you 2026!

thinktv