Golden quarter week three: My favourite activations from Christmas 2024
20 October 2025See my favourite activations from Christmas 2024 and why they stood out.
As IGD’s resident shopper marketing and retail media geek, Christmas is a genuine highlight of the year. Retailers and brands alike gear up for their commercial cup final with some great activations designed to drive incremental spend. Our Five predictions for Christmas 2025 suggest it could be a highly promotional festive season, so I am expecting to see lots of stellar activations this year.
Christmas 2025 has started in earnest
Christmas displays are already in-store, vying for shopper attention alongside displays for Halloween, Diwali and next year’s FIFA World Cup (yes – already), and there are already some that have particularly impressed. Our shopper research shows that over 80% of celebrators plan to buy products they don’t usually purchase, opening the door for innovation, indulgence and occasion-led NPD.
With that in mind. I thought it might be useful to take a look back at my three favourites from 2024’s yuletide bonanza to see what good can look like in terms of piquing shopper interest and maybe getting one more item into the basket.
CCEP (Tesco)
The Coke truck is one of the staples of Christmas and it got an outing in most major supermarkets last year. Our favourite was in Tesco. Not only was it an eye-catching display in the core seasonal aisle, but the co-location of natural bedfellows JD and Smirnoff alongside the truck demonstrated the retailer’s mindfulness of consumption occasions and doubtlessly led to a few unplanned purchases.
McBride (Sainsbury’s)
Oven cleaner might not seem like the most glamorous or inspirational category, but we absolutely loved this from Oven Pride. The humorous messaging is great, the turkey visual is very impactful and the call-to-action is effective: a superb and timely reminder to shoppers that it might be a good moment to deep clean their ovens.
Nestlé (Waitrose)
An example that demonstrates that display design can be very powerful indeed. The S. Pellegrino Christmas tree achieves great cut-through and hopefully inspired some shoppers to pop some water in their trolley alongside other festive libations!
Looking for more inspiration?
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