The Holidays at Amazon

XCM
VP, Global CCO: Jo Shoesmith
GCD: Alexa McNae
CDs: Andrea Hilliard and Melissa Bradley
AD: Julianna Schulte
Designer: Ayako High, Eva Grate
CW: Matthew Schnirman
Producer: Chris Ritter

Photography
Cody Guilfoyle, Tara Donne, Arno Frugier,
Jeremy Liebman

Joy is shared.

Building on the success of our 2023 "Joy is Shared" platform, the 2024 Holiday Campaign maintained the core design expression that resonated globally while introducing strategic creative refinements. This included enhancing the overall graphic sensibility with interactive elements and an evolved color palette that, when applied across an omni-channel campaign, created a dynamic and vibrant experience aimed at strengthening our connection with younger audiences. These optimizations were designed to ensure our campaign remained aligned with evolving consumer expectations while celebrating those universal moments of satisfaction, delight, and triumph that come from bringing joy to family and friends.

In 2024, we created an extensive suite of creative for social designated for paid placements across a diversity of platforms. These assets intentionally leveraged design direction from our style guide inclusive of photo art direction to build a cohesive campaign across multiple channels.

The 2024 Holiday campaign elevated traditional gift-giving by focusing on the unique feeling of satisfaction, delight, and triumph that comes from bringing joy to family and friends. Through a carefully crafted global design expression, the campaign brought to life those joyful seasonal moments that resonate across cultures. By acknowledging the diversity of traditions while emphasizing the universal truth that "everyone likes getting it right," this campaign elevated the shared human experience.

The campaign for Black Friday Week played globally across multiple paid media channels in the US, CA, EU, AU and SG including out-of-home in Times Square, digital display, social, physical owned and operated, and onsite. Leveraging the core components of the visual expression we created for one of Amazon’s most highly anticipated worldwide events, we created a cohesive system built upon the foundation of our core brand color, Smile Orange, with accents of neon and shimmer to evoke a graphic yet seasonal appeal.

From box to gift box, just like that.

The 2023 Holiday campaign elevated traditional gift-giving by focusing on the unique feeling of satisfaction, delight, and triumph that comes from bringing joy to family and friends. Through a carefully crafted global design expression, the campaign brought to life those joyful seasonal moments that resonate across cultures. By acknowledging the diversity of traditions while emphasizing the universal truth that "everyone likes getting it right," this campaign elevated the shared human experience.

Part of the insight included the important truth that every holiday. there are all types of shoppers, all across the world. There’s the classic “get-it-done-early” type. The “wait-til-the-last-minute” type. The “always-finds-the-perfect-gift,” the “always-finds-the-best-deal,” and the “never-shows-up-empty-handed” types. This campaign on centered on featuring all types of personas to ensure discovery of the perfect gift, no matter at what point the customer finds themselves in the season.

To bring this campaign to life, we developed key facets of design expression to achieve both emotional resonance and brand elevation: a vibrant holiday color palette, gold textural elements to signal premium quality, and warm environmental settings to create aspirational yet accessible lifestyle moments. To maintain consistency across all consumer touchpoints, we established distinct graphic art direction that could flex across channels while retaining campaign recognition.

The messaging strategy employed a playful tone to cut through seasonal clutter and forge stronger emotional connections with our audience. These strategic decisions were codified in a detailed style guide, ensuring that every campaign element, from digital to print to environmental, worked cohesively to deliver against our core campaign objectives of joyful moments while building brand equity during this crucial retail period.

To convey joyful moments, we focused part of the creative on capturing authentic celebrations that would resonate across diverse audience segments. Working with acclaimed photographer Arno Frugier, we crafted a narrative around a holiday gathering that intentionally showcased the intersection of friends and family, a dynamic created to reflect modern holiday celebrations. Art direction focused on creating moments that felt spontaneous and genuine rather than overly staged, allowing us to capture the natural chemistry and emotional connections between guests.

We deliberately styled the environment to strike a balance between aspirational and attainable, using lighting and set design to create a warm, inviting atmosphere that would feel both elevated and familiar to our audience. The casting strategy was carefully considered to represent the a contemporary holiday celebration, moving beyond traditional family structures to include the chosen families and friend groups that are increasingly central to modern gatherings. These visual assets were designed to be versatile enough to work across multiple channels while consistently reinforcing our campaign's core insight about the universal joy of creating meaningful moments for others.