Original Coverage & Source Attribution: digiday.com
Creators are everywhere in marketing these days — everywhere except Christmas ads.
The first batch of festive campaigns, from John Lewis, SharkNinja, Ulta Beauty and Burberry among others, makes little for the industry’s favorite obsession. Despite leaning on creators throughout the rest of the year, marketers aren’t doing it for the holiday crunch. That job still belongs to celebrities.
Sephora has cast Seth Rogen as a man hopelessly out of his depth, rescued by one of the retailer’s Beauty Advisors before he can do any lasting damage. Over at Kay, Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost is put through that most well-worn of Christmas tropes: the frantic hunt for the perfect present for someone special. Sports Direct roped in Nike to push the cliche a step further. Its ad follows an uncle wandering the aisles in search of something for his niece, blissfully unaware that a squad of Nike athletes is quietly steering him to the right choice. And Gucci has Mariah Carey — the industry version of the relative who gets passed from house to house every December. This year it’s the luxury brand’s turn to host her.
Why these brands do this year after year is no secret. Celebrities, particularly the calibre fronting this year’s crop, are the advertising equivalent of tinsel: nobody calls it innovative but a tree looks bare without it. For CMOs wary of how quickly an ad can set off the internet these days, that familiarity is a safety blanket. John Lewis is the latest case. Within a day of release, its spot had Piers Morgan calling it “possibly the worst advert I’ve ever seen for anything” and Mumsnet testing into the “ungrateful” grandchildren. Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, the ad’s star, escaped without a scratch.
“Part of the reason brands use celebrities in ads is because they’re borrowing fame,” said Lynne Deason, head of creative excellence at Kantar. “Christmas is this mass market moment where brands are trying to reach everyone and so often brands are looking for a celebrity that everyone will recognize rather than maybe a particular audience.”
None of which is a knock on creators. Indeed, marketers have spent the year handing creators budget, stage time and, increasingly, the lead role in global campaigns. Christmas ads, however, play by older rules. It is the most scrutinized piece of work a brand releases all year, with the biggest budget and the most senior sign-off, and its conventions have barely changed in a decade: a big film, a broad audience and, more often than not, a famous face. Striking to that formula keeps a brand in line with every rival in the ad break. Leaving it puts the brand out on its own and few CMOs want to be the one doing that in December.
“That’s perhaps harder with creators because people tend to tap into them for particular interests,” said Deason. “Obviously there are some who are becoming very famous in their own right with mass audiences but there are fewer of those. And Chrismtas is such a competitive time.”
How long that takes is anyone’s guess. Plenty of creators are household names within their own niche but Christmas needs a face that granny and the teenagers on the sofa will bith recognise. Take Tesco’s Christmas ad starring comedian Roisin Conaty and actor Anna Maxwell Martin. It is currently the most talked about commercial in the U.K, according to Sprout Social. So far, people have posted or talked about the ad 3,263 times (volume) racking up over 36,000 total interactions like likes, comments and shares (engagement). Attitude toward it, however, is divided, with only 51% of conversations positive. This is due, according to the researchers, to people feeling that the advert’s premise is unrealistic and presents a lack of awareness over how retail works. Even so, two famous actors got the country talking, which is more than most festive ads manage.
It’s also why the next few years are likely to bring festive campaigns that put stars and creators side by side. The biggest creators now pull audiences that many TV names would envy and plenty of celebrities have learned to behave like creators – filming their own content and talking straight to fans on their own feeds. SharkNina’s holiday campaign shows how this already works. Kevin Hart, David Beckham, Aryna Siarhiejeŭna and Tom Bradyset up the story by posting short teasers to their social accounts days before the actual spot landed. Laura Dyer, senior vp of global brand and partnerships at SharkNinja, calls the line between the two groups “super fluid.” Before long, the lead in a Christmas ad could to whoever has the most devoted following, whether they made their name on TV, film or a smartphone screen.
Anthropologie certainly has. The retailer handed its holiday campaign to the comedian and creator of the hit viral web series Brooklyn Coffee Shop Pooja Tripathi, who wrote and showran a micro comedy series about a holiday party “from script to shoot”, according to CMO Barbra Sainsurin. The brand stuck to what it knows best, dressing the cast and styling the set. The rollout has trailers and teasers “like a movie launch” and about 50 more creators will spread it across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Reddit. The plan, said Sainsurin, is to keep deciding story by story which ones go to creators and which stay with the brand.
“We’re using the holiday to challenge ourselves beyond just the traditional way in which we tell stories and to create a more immersive brand experience through this extension and partnership with an original content creator.”
Kelsey Gray Sherman spent years at WME brokering deals between celebrities and the brands that want them. Last month Lego poached her. She takes up a newly created role as the toymaker’s head of celebrity talent and brand-first partnerships and reports to Jill Wilfert, svp of entertainment, partnerships and content. Lego already knows its way around a box office, having pulled in nearly $700 million from two Lego Movies. A company with that track record hiring an agency dealmaker suggests Lego wants more of its entertainment built around its own brand with famous names and outside partners brought in to amplify.
Over email, Gray Sherman explained what she has planned for the role.
What’s the purpose of your role?
The LEGO Group has a long history of iconic collaborations across its business – from product to entertainment, gaming and more. As those partnerships have grown in recent years, so has the need for dedicated in-house expertise and coordination, which is where this new position was created.
My role will be to connect those dots across a business of talented people already doing fantastic work, and to create a consistent approach to engaging talent while identifying strategic opportunities to extend and elevate relationships across multiple touch points.
What does it say about where you see the future of celebrity talent and brand first partnerships headed? For instance, does celebrity talent include creators now?
The LEGO Group’s invitation to its partners is simple: come create something with us that will help inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. Looking ahead, the LEGO brand is excited to build and explore new relationships building on this mission, in a way that can extend across different parts of the business and evolve over time.
That absolutely includes creators. The distinction between “traditional celebrity” and creator is increasingly less meaningful to audiences, so the brand’s approach to building and executing relationships with all manner of talent reflects that.
The focus of my role will be on represented talent, while we have several in-house teams that focus specifically on fan creators and local influencers. In collaboration with the brand’s best-in-class social and influencer teams, my role will help bring consistency to those relationships while maximizing the impact and mutual value of each partnership.
How will your background at WME help here?
My experience across entertainment marketing – and specifically helping grow WME’s brand representation business – brings an expansive perspective on how global brands are engaging top talent and entertainment partners to make an impact in culture.
Beyond providing direct relationships and connectivity, I will be working to help implement best-in-class partnership practices across the organization and streamline how the brand is showing up to industry partners.
What does “work with brands in ways that go beyond traditional licensing and product collaborations” mean for Lego?
It means that product does not always need to be the first point of entry when exploring a partnership. The LEGO Group has an extraordinary history of product innovation with partners, and embracing “brand first partnerships” is not about moving away from that – it is about recognizing the expanding ways two partners can create mutual value for each other and stand-out experiences for fans – with or without product.
What we’ve heard
“We just need to translate that progress in terms of performance into broader adoption and a larger share of advertiser budgets. I do think AI is a meaningful accelerant there. So as we look into 2027 and beyond, we’re continuing to improve performance with better AI-powered recommendations, and we’re making it easier for advertisers to measure those results using the tools they already rely on, which we know is really important to their confidence in putting more budget behind Snapchat.”
— Snap CEO Evan Spiegel during the company’s Q3 earnings call, when talking about the challenge of turning improvements in ad performance into a larger share of advertiser budgets.
Numbers to know
From 13% to 8%: Percentage decrease of paid clicks growth on Google, per earnings
54%: Percentage by which Reddit’s advertising business grew year over year, per earnings
30 million: Total number of Snapchat+ subscribers
14%: Percentage by which Pinterest’s stock dropped following its Q3 2026 earnings results
What we’re reading
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Apple’s Services growth is slowing as App Store revenue stalls under legal and gaming pressures, and the author argues advertising, not commissions, is its best way to monetize the App Store’s nearly one billion weekly users, per Mobile Dev Memo.
Instagram tries to entice long-form creators
Instagram is luring long-form creators to Features with prominent Explore placement and one-off payments of up to $500,000, but without a YouTube-style payout system, Mosseri admits it hasn’t cracked monetization, risking a repeat of IGTV, according to Social Media Today.
What we’ve covered
Google search loses its free pass with buyers
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In graphic detail: Six thousand brands later, ChatGPT ads still have a conversion problem
The number of brands advertising on ChatGPT has climbed past 6,000, but paid ChatGPT traffic converts at about a third of Google’s rate, so OpenAI still has to prove its ads actually work.
Apple’s Safari block hands WPP a fresh case for InfoSum
WPP says Apple’s Safari crackdown on identity-matching firms has barely affected it, because its InfoSum platform works outside the browser, which strengthens the case for a deal many in the industry once doubted.
Good ads have a new name, ‘entertainment-first’ and SharkNinja is using it for its holiday campaign
SharkNinja’s in-house holiday ad has Kevin Hart, Tom Brady and Aryna Sabalenka wrecking David Beckham’s house, teased with fake CCTV leaks, as the brand bets on “entertainment-first” ads people actually want to share, while still slipping in product demos to drive sales.
