I used to work as the Marketing Manager for The Elf on the Shelf—you know, that viral best-selling Christmas tradition that's become part of the cultural fabric of the holidays. I even landed them a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. So, when it comes to holiday marketing? Well... I know holiday marketing.

And this year's crop of campaigns tells a story that should worry every brand executive: the gap between authentic holiday ad storytelling and corporate cynicism has never been wider—or more visible.

What Makes Authentic Holiday Ad Storytelling Work in 2025?

Let’s be honest about the world we’re living in right now.

Trump is back in office. We’ve watched genocide unfold in Gaza in real time. Ukraine is still at war with Russia, with no end in sight. Billionaires are running the country while late-stage capitalism grinds everyone else into dust. Millions have been laid off this year, the entire marketing team I sat on included. Over 300,000 Black women have left the workforce. The government shut down and left SNAP recipients hanging for food. And yes, we now have concentration camps on U.S. soil, holding human beings in conditions no democracy should ever defend.

This is the backdrop against which brands are asking us to feel warm and fuzzy about their holiday commercials.

Historically, the best holiday ads have done more than sell products. They’ve reflected something true about human connection. They’ve made us feel seen. They’ve reminded us who we want to be during a season that’s supposed to bring out the best in everyone.

But in 2025, the distance between holiday-ad sentiment and lived reality has never been wider. Audiences aren’t just spotting bad advertising, they’re detecting the chasm between what brands say and what they stand by. We know immediately which campaigns come from brands that understand the assignment… and which ones are just cutting corners, chasing efficiency, or slapping a warm message on top of values they don’t actually uphold while the world burns.

This year, we got three perfect case studies: one brand that got it right, one that undercut itself through corporate hypocrisy, and one that torched its own legacy in the name of “optimization.”

When Holiday Storytelling Transcends the Product: Crayola's "Blue Christmas"

Crayola's "Blue Christmas" campaign centers on young Zoe and her dog Pickle, who can't see the colors red or green. So she does something radical: she rebuilds Christmas in blue—the one color Pickle can actually see.

There's no voiceover explaining the lesson. No manufactured sentiment. Just a child who notices someone else's reality and refuses to accept their exclusion. Crayola's CMO Victoria Lozano explains the campaign celebrates "one family's quest to reshape and reimagine the holidays for the ones they love, even if that someone sees the world a little differently."

What makes this work is what most brands are afraid to do: trust the audience. The campaign keeps the inclusive premise throughout with subtle touches, like keeping a red stocking for grandma who shows up stylishly in her favorite color. The attention to detail reveals genuine empathy, not market-researched sentimentality.

The commercial moved me so much, I bought blue Christmas lights after watching it. My dogs can actually see our tree now. That's the power of storytelling that makes you rethink reality—when a campaign about crayons makes you realize you've been decorating for yourself, not for every member of your family.

Crayola made me buy blue Christmas lights for my dogs; Coca-Cola made me wonder if anyone at that company has ever felt a human emotion (we’ll get to that soon enough, though).

Why Empathy-Driven Storytelling Resonates

The tagline—"It's not what you give; it's what you create"—could be meaningless brand-speak. Except Crayola earned it. According to their recent Colour Perception Survey with the Ad Council Research Institute, 87% of people say colour impacts their emotions and memories.

This isn't a campaign about crayons. It's about the radical act of noticing who's been left out and dismantling your assumptions to include them. The film plays with emotional engagement by showing how inclusive design and meaningful detail can spark a holiday campaign beyond the usual snow and Santa-driven stories.

Turns out the secret to great holiday advertising is noticing who you've excluded, not optimizing production costs down to the millisecond.

In a sea of red and green, Crayola asked: What if we made Christmas blue for those who see differently? That question contains more humanity than most brands manage in their entire holiday portfolio.

When Corporate Values Contradict the Holiday Message: Home Depot's Cognitive Dissonance

Home Depot launched a holiday campaign showcasing real tree farmers and their farms for the first time, with "The Right Tree" following a tree's journey from farm to Home Depot lot and finally to a family's home.

The 30-second spot is genuinely moving. Accompanying social media content features tree farm partner Sexton Farms along with lot associates, telling the story of a family-run business and the hands that have touched sap and soil for decades. You can feel the craft, the care, the authenticity.

But here's where it gets complicated.

The Dissonance Between Story and Reality

Home Depot has faced mounting pressure regarding ICE raids that have repeatedly occurred at its store locations, particularly in its parking lots, where day laborers—many of them immigrants—gather seeking work. Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller explicitly ordered ICE to target informal labor gathering points such as Home Depot locations.

While Home Depot maintains it's not coordinating with ICE and isn't notified when raids happen, protests have erupted at Home Depot locations in cities like Chicago and Charlotte, with demonstrators carrying signs reading "ICE out of The Home Depot. Protect our communities."

Home Depot will make you cry over a Christmas tree while ICE raids happen in their parking lots—but hey, at least the ad featured real farmers.

A brand can pour all the tenderness and humanity it wants into a holiday story about real farmers and real families. But when that same brand's parking lots become sites of federal enforcement actions that tear apart other real families? The emotional storytelling rings hollow.

Home Depot's more emotional approach to communicating value could be critical to capturing loyalty this year, with shoppers expecting to spend 10% less versus 2024 around the holidays as they contend with macroeconomic pressures, according to Deloitte. But loyalty requires integrity. And audiences in 2025 are sophisticated enough to hold both the beauty of an ad and the ugliness of corporate inaction in their minds simultaneously.

When Brands Abandon Storytelling Entirely: Coca-Cola's AI Catastrophe

Last year, Coca-Cola rolled out its first AI-generated holiday commercial. The backlash was immediate and brutal. Social media users called it "soulless" and "devoid of any actual creativity". People made their feelings clear: this isn't it. Go back to what made your holiday ads legendary.

Coca-Cola looked at last year's AI disaster, listened to the backlash, and said, "You know what this needs? 70,000 more AI-generated clips."

Five specialists used AI prompts to make tens of thousands of video clips, with the company's CMO Manolo Arroyo confirming the AI approach cut production time from a year to just a month. The result? A devastating graphic posted on LinkedIn by AI consultant Dino Burbidge pointed out glaring inconsistencies in the design of the trucks in the new AI "Holidays are Coming" ad, including changing roads and shifting object positions like Christmas trees.

The Cost of "Optimization"

Despite the major backlash in 2024, the ad racked up billions of impressions. But impressions aren't the same as connection. While the three ads in the campaign were successful in earning attention and brand recall in independent testing and even scored higher for inducing cravings than the 2020 version, much of that engagement came from people debating what was missing rather than celebrating what was new.

What's missing is soul. Remember when Coca-Cola's holiday ads felt like coming home? When those polar bears looked cozy and real instead of like they'd escaped a glitchy fever dream?

For decades, Coca-Cola was the holiday season. That red truck rolling through the snow wasn't just an ad—it was tradition. But Coca-Cola's global VP and head of generative AI defended the approach by saying, "Last year people criticized the craftsmanship. But this year the craftsmanship is ten times better."

That's the problem right there. They think this is about craftsmanship. Nothing says "holiday magic" like a CMO bragging about cutting production time from a year to a month—really warms the heart, doesn't it?

What Authentic Holiday Ad Storytelling Requires From Brands

Having worked on one of the most successful holiday traditions in modern history, I can tell you: the magic isn't in the budget. It's not in the production value or the celebrity endorsements. It's in whether you actually give a damn about the humans on both sides of the screen.

Authentic holiday ad storytelling in 2025 requires three things most brands don't want to hear:

Genuine empathy that goes beyond market research. Crayola didn't ask focus groups whether dogs can see blue. They built an entire campaign around noticing who gets left out. That level of empathy can't be manufactured or A/B tested into existence.
Corporate integrity that matches your storytelling. You can't tell heartwarming stories about families and community while remaining silent as federal agents conduct raids in your parking lots. The dissonance destroys trust faster than any competitor ever could.
Respect for the audience's intelligence and memory. We remember what made holiday ads special. We know the difference between magic created by humans who understand connection and content generated by algorithms optimizing for cost savings. As one person commented on Coca-Cola's YouTube ad, where almost every comment is negative: "This is absolutely destroying the nostalgia this ad once had."

The Future of Holiday Advertising

The brands that win hearts this season, and build lasting loyalty, will be the ones that understand storytelling isn't about efficiency metrics. It's about reflecting to audiences who we want to be: more empathetic, more connected, more human.

Some brands get that. They understand that holiday advertising is a sacred trust between brand and consumer. They know the assignment is to make us feel something true, not to optimize production timelines or check boxes on a diversity brief while ignoring real-world impacts.

And some brands? They're too busy feeding prompts into AI tools or issuing carefully worded non-statements to care.

Audiences will remember which is which. We always do.

The State of Holiday Ad Storytelling in 2025: The Campaign That Got It Right and the Ones That Revealed Their Own Dissonance