Holiday campaigns can push brands away from product features and toward emotional storytelling. At a Brandweek 2026 fireside chat co-hosted by iSpot, Mercedes-Benz USA shared how it decides when seasonal magic should lead.
The balancing act is one many marketers recognize: how do you deliver an emotional holiday message without undermining the brand work that runs all year? For Mercedes-Benz, the answer starts with fixed brand pillars and a clear role for data.
Emotional storytelling inside guardrails
Ryanne Webber, head of brand communications at Mercedes-Benz USA, said craftsmanship, luxury, innovation and performance remain non-negotiable. Holiday creative can still stretch beyond the product-led messaging the brand uses at other times of year.
“It’s an exciting time for us because it opens up different opportunities we normally don’t have during the year,” Webber said. Last year’s holiday commercials brought in seasonal characters such as Santa, a clear shift in tone rather than a change in identity.
“Success is protecting that from a long-term strategy standpoint, but also doing something new and innovative,” she added.
What the data showed about timing
Mercedes-Benz does not plan holiday creative on feel alone. The brand works with iSpot on creative testing and reviews prior-year performance before shaping the next season. One finding changed how the team thinks about campaign windows.
When a popular campaign from December was extended into January—a typically slow month—the brand saw an iSpot Ace score that was nearly consistent with the December result. Ace scores evaluate ads on factors including relevance, likeability, information, change, attention and desire.
That continuity gave the team evidence that some seasonal work has a longer useful life, and that selective extensions can be productive.
A practical framework for marketers
The bigger point is not that holiday campaigns always work. It is that brands should use evidence to locate where creativity can take risks and where consistency must hold. Webber said the team looks for places to be a little more risky while remaining true to what already performs well.
For marketing teams, the framework looks like this:
- Keep core brand pillars non-negotiable, even when the creative turns seasonal.
- Use prior-year data to decide where to extend, refine or experiment.
- Give each campaign one clear job instead of stacking every objective into a single story.
Why this matters
Holiday advertising is expensive and highly visible. The Mercedes-Benz example shows that emotional storytelling can stretch a brand without breaking it, provided the brand knows which assets are fixed and lets data mark the edge of the sandbox.
Webber put the lesson simply: a single campaign should not have to carry every brand opportunity and business objective, because the storytelling suffers when it tries.
Source: Adweek
