2025 Holiday Campaign: Creator Strategy
For our 2025 holiday campaign, we moved away from traditional beauty and lip-care creators and partnered instead with holiday hosts and homecomers — a decision driven by media efficiency and audience relevance.
1. Better media efficiency in a peak-cost season
Holiday is one of the most competitive periods for beauty advertisers, pushing CPMs up sharply. By expanding into adjacent creator categories with lower demand, we accessed more efficient CPMs, stretched our investment further, and produced more content for the same budget.
2. Entertainment-first content
Rather than tutorials or product demos, we worked with creators whose content already centers on holiday traditions, entertaining, and family gatherings. The result: thumb-stopping content, higher watch time, and more authentic product integration that drove stronger downstream conversion.
3. Alignment with ChapStick's core audience
The strategy rested on a simple insight: during the holidays, people are either hosting or going home. Hosts reached busy, socially active consumers prepping for gatherings; homecomers reached suburban and Americana audiences reconnecting with family — a strong overlap with our core consumer. Instead of forcing the product into beauty routines, we embedded ChapStick into moments where dry lips are naturally part of the story.
Outcome
Shifting from beauty creators to culturally relevant lifestyle creators lowered media costs, differentiated us from competitors, and delivered a campaign native to how consumers actually experience the holidays, balancing efficiency, relevance, and content performance.
Results:
7 creators, 14 posts
129M views
$1.1M EMV
