This year alone, Americans are expected to spend an average of $975 on holiday gifts, according to a November Gallup poll. So it may be no wonder that brands are investing even more in holiday advertising.

“In the United States, we’re starting to treat [holiday ads] with bigger budgets, longer formats, and more interesting storytelling,” Jason Ashlock, ECD at adam&eveDDB New York, told Marketing Brew.

However, due to factors like economic pressures and changing tastes, many brands have reevaluated their holiday ads this year in an effort to connect more authentically with consumers. We spoke to creatives at a few agencies to find out how they approached holiday creative this season.

Play ball: Holiday advertising is particularly prominent in the UK, with all of the creatives we spoke to comparing holiday advertising there to the Super Bowl in terms of relevancy. A number of brands, including department store John Lewis and soft-drink giant Coca-Cola, have for years been known for releasing short film-like holiday ads for the UK market.

“The John Lewis ads for the UK are like the Super Bowl for the Brits—they anticipate it, they’re waiting for it to come,” Armando Potter, group strategy director at 72andSunny, told us. “There are a few brands like that who are historically known for the holiday ads that they put out.”

In more recent years, there’s been interest among brands to ramp up holiday advertising in the US, Ashlock said.

“I think only recently, in the last five to 10 years in the United States, has Christmas become a bigger deal,” he told us. “The Super Bowl will always reign supreme, but Christmas advertising in the United States has become a much bigger deal.”

Keep reading here.—JS

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When you see a coworker in pajamas, it might be time to check the employee handbook.

Unless you’re at Portland, Oregon-based Hanna Andersson.

“In December, we definitely go all in and [at] our holiday parties, you’re required to wear your pajamas to the office,” Kara Carter, chief product officer of the clothing brand, told Retail Brew. “We take a big picture every year; we’re all in our pajamas.”

Pajamas are business attire at the company because it’s in the pajamas-making business. In 1993, Hanna Andersson, which began 10 years earlier as a children’s clothing brand, introduced matching family pajamas in its catalog.

The company was not the first to sell family pajamas, which fashion historian Debbie Sessions dates back to the 1950s, although matching PJs for mom and the kids (sans dad) had appeared years before. But many consider Hanna Andersson to be the company that popularized them, with CNN calling it the “OG brand to launch matching pajamas for the entire family.”

Now family pajamas are woven—with some weaves better than others—into the retail landscape, with heavyweights including Amazon, Walmart, ShopDisney, Target, Kohl’s, and Macy’s all doing a brisk business in the sleepwear.

Let’s slip into something a little more comfortable, because here are some milestones that mark how family PJs became a sleeper hit.

1950s: Matching family pajamas first appear in department store advertising, but the trend won’t catch on for decades.

1993: Hanna Andersson introduces family pajamas with four designs.

1997: Hanna Andersson adds holiday patterns—green and white stripes, as well as red and white stripes—which are still offered today.

2005: Welcome, quadrupeds. Hanna Andersson adds Pet Johns to its offering.

2009: Sleepyheads.com introduces a line of family pajamas.

2011: The Company Store, as part of a cause-marketing effort, declares November 19 as National Family Pajama Night. The tradition seems to have waned, but—see 2019 below—we still have a national matching PJ-related holiday.

Read more on Retail Brew.—AAN

Each week, Marketing Brew recaps what people are talking about on social media, the trends that took over our feeds, and how marketers are responding.

Put a ring bow on it: Fast-food joints seem to be loving the coquette trend, if you even care. Raising Cane’s, Chipotle, McDonald’s, and Jollibee are just some of the brands that have posted pics of food adorned with little pink bows.

Walkin’ in a winter wonderland: From last month’s Skims’s après-ski campaign to recent posts from Alo and Futurewise, it seems that brands are leaning into the look of mountainous green screens, fake snow, and ’70s nostalgia. Glossier did something similar last year for its Swiss Miss balm release. Merry kitschmas to all!

Forget what you saw: In a pivot from non-alcoholic bevs to…fish eggs, Haus has apparently photoshopped jars of its caviar into some of its old marketing pics for its aperitif offerings. And people have noticed.

The robots are running wild: If you feared that AI would soon take over all art and communications, may this be a comfort to you.

Multiple people this week have posted about messing with a brand using AI or auto-reply. Apparently, if a website’s chatbot is ChatGPT-powered, people can do things like ask it to code or even get a car dealer to agree to a “legally binding” $1 offer for a new car. While we wait to see if chatbots can legally close business deals, one person suggested that the dealership’s marketing team would be smart to fulfill the order.

Meanwhile, on TikTok, people are using an AI filter that expands photos with generated context and backgrounds—and brands like Ghia are jumping in. But unless coffee shops now exist in the middle of city streets, there’s something left to be desired here.

Just for fun: American Girl knew what it was doing with the “canon event” trend. Here’s to the next generation of kids who are about to absolutely destroy their dolls’ hair on Christmas morning.—KH

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