Is Woolies’ decision to recycle last Christmas’ TV campaign the smart play?
Yesterday, Mumbrella revealed that Woolworths is rerunning last year’s Christmas campaign, in a week where many big brands — including rivals Coles — have launched big new festive-themed TV ads. So who has it right? Jo-Ann Foo, Senior Director at Analytic Partners, reveals what the data shows about building campaigns that perform long after the tinsel’s packed away.
Jo-Ann Foo, senior director of Analytic Partners
Christmas is the season of big emotions and big budgets. If you’re a marketer this applies both in your personal and professional life. It’s the season when audiences are emotionally primed, media channels are saturated and brands compete to create their most memorable work of the year.
But this year, one of Australia’s biggest advertisers has taken a different approach. Woolworths surprised many by rerunning last year’s “Make This Christmas a Classic” ad instead of producing new creative – telling Mumbrella it is redirecting its TVC budget toward cost-of-living relief initiatives.
In an industry where it’s almost expected that brands will launch something shiny and new for Christmas, that decision stands out. And it might just be a sign of things to come.
Because behind the sparkle and sentiment lies a harder commercial truth: Christmas is also the most expensive time of year to be in market. Media costs soar, attention fragments and the pressure to stand out can tempt brands into investing in creative that doesn’t deliver the long-term value they expect.
So, what kind of creative actually works best during the holidays? And how can marketers ensure their Christmas campaigns deliver maximum efficiency, not just festive feel-good fluff?
Does the traditional 60-second Christmas TVC work?
For many marketers, the entire concept of a Christmas campaign still conjures visions of the glossy long-form TV ad – a 60-second-plus TV spot with grand production values filled with laughter, nostalgia and a storyline that builds to the reveal of the brand logo at the end.
It’s a well-loved tradition (you’ll know when the new John Lewis ad is out whether you want to or not), can generate a lot of headlines if done right (or wrong!), but it’s one that may no longer make commercial sense.
Our analysis shows that when brands spread spend across five media channels rather than concentrating on one, they generate around 77% more sales per dollar spent. In contrast, the traditional long-form TVC demands a disproportionate share of production and media investment for a format that reaches fewer people, less efficiently.
The reality is that in today’s landscape, few brands have a unique message to share during the festive season that truly justifies 60 seconds of expensive broadcast airtime. Research from Amplified Intelligence shows that 85% of ads across modern platforms fail to hold attention for even 2.5 seconds. Before investing in a glossy TVC, marketers should ask whether their ad can genuinely earn that level of attention.
But if your brand does have something meaningful to say, consider telling that story through longer-form social or digital video instead. These channels offer far more cost-efficient ways to engage audiences who choose to watch, share and rewatch content on their own terms.
Your long-form idea should be strong enough to spark that kind of voluntary attention; otherwise, it’s just more noise in an already crowded season.
At least the food deliveries are fresh
Build on what you already have
While it’s tempting to refresh creative for the season, it can actually be far more efficient to leverage what’s already working. Christmas falls in the most expensive media trading period of the year, which means you would likely already be paying a premium for exposure. Launching an entirely new campaign during the holiday season risks further diluting your return on investment.
Instead, consider how you can add a layer of festive emotion or creative nuance to your existing brand platform. A holiday lens doesn’t have to mean an entirely new story – it can be as simple as reinforcing familiar brand cues with seasonal warmth.
We’ve seen time and again that brand messaging outperforms short-term performance activations 80% of the time. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to lean into that – to align feel-good brand storytelling with the feel-good season. What is the Christmas spin on your existing characters or assets?
And remember: new creative isn’t automatically better creative. Analytic Partners has observed creative wear-out – the point at which new creative becomes less efficient than the previous one – in only 14 out of more than 51,000 campaigns.
In other words, most creative continues to perform effectively long after marketers think it’s time to change – when you’re bored of your campaign, the chances are people are only just starting to notice it.
Woolworths’ decision to re-run last year’s Christmas campaign is a sign that businesses are starting to pick up on this fact.
Consistency pays off. Campaigns that build on existing brand cues and memory structures compound effectiveness over time, delivering stronger returns with every exposure.
And, just like Christmas dinner, you can also reheat the leftovers to make something even more delicious. We’ve seen several examples where brands brought back a past Christmas campaign and achieved a ~20% uplift in both response and ROI compared with its first run.
Audiences don’t tire of great creative as quickly as marketers do. In fact, familiar messaging can cut through clutter by triggering recognition and positive association – two powerful drivers of mental availability during a season when consumers are bombarded with messages.
That doesn’t mean recycling without thought. A successful revival pairs familiarity with freshness: perhaps a small narrative update, a new soundtrack or subtle festive references. The key is to reinforce what’s already lodged in consumer memory, not overwrite it.
Woolies is banking that prawns will still be served this Christmas Day lunch
Think broader, not just bigger
Another way to unlock efficiency is to consider your full business rather than a single product or line. Analysis from Analytic Partners has found that campaigns that cover more than 50% of a company’s portfolio typically deliver around 118% higher impact than those that have a narrow focus.
In practice, that means aligning holiday campaigns with brand-level messaging that lifts the entire business, rather than concentrating resources on a single stock-keeping unit or limited promotion. When your creative and media dollars work harder across multiple products, the incremental gains compound.
Make this Christmas about smart creativity
The festive season will always be a creative playground – and rightly so. Emotion drives attention and Christmas gives marketers rare license to tell human stories. But great creativity should not come at the expense of commercial efficiency.
The marketers who challenge themselves to make Christmas campaigns work harder will come out fittest and firing in 2026. Build on what’s proven rather than starting from scratch, balance emotion with efficiency and remember that consistency and familiarity often outperform novelty.
Get that balance right, and like the best presents, it will continue to deliver satisfaction long after the Christmas lights come down.
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