The holiday season has officially arrived—lights are twinkling, decorated trees line storefronts, and brands across industries are competing to capture consumer attention (and wallets). While holiday advertising has always leaned on emotional appeal, the storytelling frameworks emerging in 2025 are noticeably different. This year, brand narratives reflect shifting consumer priorities, economic pressures, and the increasing presence of AI-generated creative.
Before diving into Christmas—the most commercially concentrated holiday in the U.S.—it’s important to look back at the narrative evolution that began earlier in the year. With the introduction of new tariffs and rising production costs, consumer purchasing behavior has changed significantly. In response, brands have begun adjusting their messaging architecture, emotional triggers, and media distribution strategies to maintain engagement despite tightening household budgets.
Disney’s Seasonal Strategy: Reframing Nostalgia Through Targeted Storytelling
Disney’s 2024–2025 holiday push is a strong example of adaptive storytelling. Celebrating Disneyland’s 70th anniversary, the company leaned heavily into family-centered nostalgia—an evergreen pillar of its brand identity. However, this year’s Halloween and early holiday campaigns introduced a subtle shift in narrative tone.
In televised ads, Disney deployed a lightly “spooky” storyline featuring a family entering a haunted house, emphasizing costumes, shared experiences, and the tradition of dressing up. This creative direction stayed consistent with Disney’s long-standing emphasis on wholesome family fun rather than genuine fright.
On social media, however, the messaging diverged. Ads were optimized for younger demographics and fandom-driven audiences, showcasing plush merchandise, character-forward items, and visually rich product panoramas rather than apparel. Despite sharing the same set and atmosphere, the commercial variants reveal a deliberate segmentation strategy:
- TV ads → Targeting families and broad audiences through experiential storytelling
- Social ads → Targeting collectors, teens, and niche fandom communities through product-centric storytelling
Disney’s inclusion of moodier visuals—like the little girl standing alone in the doorway—signals a micro-shift toward participating in the broader “spooky aesthetic” trend dominating Gen Z and Gen Alpha content spaces. It’s still Disney, but with a dialed-up atmospheric tension designed to resonate with more contemporary Halloween sensibilities.
Black Friday 2025: A Case Study in Value-Based Messaging
This year’s Black Friday landscape was notably muted. With companies openly acknowledging higher costs due to supply chain constraints and tariffs, consumer enthusiasm waned. As a result, brands leaned heavily on value framing rather than emotional storytelling.
Several marketers extended “doorbuster” deals across the entire Thanksgiving week—a move that both diluted urgency and reflected the reality of flattening consumer demand. In many cases, creative assets shifted away from featuring people altogether, focusing instead on product close-ups, price drops, and savings callouts.
This underscores a broader trend:
When economic anxiety rises, brands deprioritize relational storytelling and pivot toward transactional messaging. In 2025, this shift was nearly universal across retail.
Coca-Cola: Tradition Meets Technology—With Mixed Results
One of the most talked-about holiday ads this season comes from Coca-Cola. Following last year’s backlash to its AI-generated commercial, Coca-Cola doubled down on the integration of digital animation. The 2025 campaign features AI-created animals, minimal human presence, and a storyline that blends “timeless tradition” with a forward-looking, tech-driven aesthetic.
This raises an important question around brand authenticity:
How do consumers interpret tradition when the visual language becomes increasingly artificial?
Coke’s intention appears to be a fusion of legacy branding (their iconic holiday animals and warmth) with innovation signaling (“we’re evolving with the times”). However, the absence of real people may unintentionally distance viewers who associate the brand with togetherness, family, and shared rituals. The effectiveness of this strategy will depend on whether consumers view AI-enhanced narratives as magical… or mechanized.
So What Does This Mean for Consumer Behavior?
Across all three examples, a consistent pattern emerges:
1. Consumers are less emotionally engaged this year.
Brands are shifting away from human-centered storytelling toward value messaging or AI-enhanced visuals. This may reduce emotional resonance, which historically drives holiday purchasing.
2. Narrative clarity is declining.
Consumers are being inundated with “deals,” “new,” and “limited-time” messaging, making it harder to discern what is genuinely meaningful or worth purchasing.
3. Authenticity is more important than ever.
Audiences respond best to campaigns that feel grounded, intentional, and emotionally coherent. Heavy-handed AI usage or purely transactional ads risk eroding trust.
4. The “magic” of holiday advertising is evolving.
Traditional holiday narratives—warmth, family, sentimentality—are being disrupted by economic pressures and technological experimentation. Many consumers feel this shift, even if subtly.
Final Thought
Holiday advertising in 2025 reflects a marketplace in flux. As companies navigate cost increases, new technologies, and changing audience expectations, their storytelling strategies are evolving in real time. The result is a landscape where nostalgia, innovation, value framing, and digital experimentation coexist—sometimes harmoniously, sometimes awkwardly.
How consumers respond to these shifts in the months ahead will influence not just holiday sales figures but the broader direction of brand storytelling in 2025 and beyond.
Lauren Williams | Strategy & Storytelling 