Holiday marketing trends change fast — and small brands feel the pressure the most. Competing with bigger budgets and bigger teams isn’t easy, but staying ahead of what shoppers actually respond to can help level the playing field.
The goal isn’t to chase every trend; it’s to understand the ones that matter and translate them into smart, achievable creative.
Here are some of the holiday marketing trends shaping 2025, plus how a creative agency can help you bring them to life without burning out your team.
Why Small Brands Should Stay On Top of Holiday Marketing Trends
Holiday marketing is noisy. Scrolls move faster, attention spans get shorter and consumers bounce between platforms hunting for the best deal, the right gift or the prettiest packaging. When you’re a small brand, staying current helps you show up with relevance instead of blending into the holiday chaos.
Understanding the trends gives you a clearer sense of where customers are discovering products, how they’re making decisions, and what makes them stop, engage and buy.
It also helps you allocate your budget more efficiently, focusing on what consumers actually care about rather than what worked three holiday seasons ago.
The brands that win the holidays aren’t simply following trends, but adapting them in ways that feel intentional and on-brand.
2025 Holiday Marketing Trends to Try
Social Search-Optimized Creative
Shoppers aren’t Googling anymore, they’re searching TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, and wherever else real people talk about real products. Holiday shoppers want to see how something works, looks, fits or functions before they buy.
In 2025, more small brands are creating content designed for cross-platform discovery. Think TikTok videos built around common search phrases, Instagram visuals tailored to “gift ideas for…” queries, and YouTube content that mirrors the style of trusted product reviewers. Instead of creating for the feed alone, brands are creating for the search bar inside these platforms.
Agencies help brands map those platform-specific discovery patterns so content actually shows up where people are looking.
Live Shopping That Feels Entertaining, Not Salesy
Live shopping isn’t new, but the way it’s evolving is. Gen Z responds to livestreams that feel like shows, not infomercials.
Amazon, TikTok, and Instagram have all leaned into creator-led lives, themed events, real-time demos and playful formats that feel more like entertainment than a product pitch.
Small brands are finding success by leaning into the storytelling side of live shopping. A charismatic creator hosting a “gift ideas hour,” a themed holiday livestream event or a new-product drop with real-time Q&A can drive high intent, especially during peak gifting moments.
Agencies can help produce these sessions, find the right hosts, and build integrated creative that tie the livestream to your paid, social and website experience.
Modular Creative for a Faster, Cheaper Q4
Holiday content goes through iterations, lots of them. Instead of starting from scratch every time, brands are building modular creative: assets designed to be tweaked, sliced, re-hooked and repurposed without losing quality.
For small brands, this looks like designing one shoot that becomes dozens of usable pieces across paid ads, social, email and landing pages.
It’s also about creating variations early, so when an idea takes off (or flops), you already have versions ready to test without scrambling.
Creative agencies are pros at building this kind of system — making your budget go further while keeping the quality high.
Gift Guides That Feel Curated, Not Generic
Holiday gift guides are still a major driver of discovery, but the era of “Gifts Under $50” grids is fading. Shoppers want guides that feel personal, visual and editorial. They want to see real use cases, beautifully styled content and a point of view they trust.
Small brands are building gift guides around personalities (“For the Cozy Friend”), aesthetics, lifestyle moments or specific buyer needs, not just price.
Some are adding interactive elements, quizzes or immersive landing pages that make the shopping experience feel intentional.
A creative agency can help transform a basic product list into a storytelling experience that feels premium and converts.
Creator Collabs That Look More Like Content Than Ads
As holiday ad fatigue grows, creator content is becoming a cheat code. But the partnerships that perform best in 2025 aren’t overly polished. They’re cozy vlogs, holiday routines, gift-hauls-with-a-story or playful moments that feel natural inside the creator’s world.
Small brands are leaning into creators for everything from look books to product walkthroughs to soft-sell storytelling. It’s not about pushing a discount, it’s about making your product feel like a character in the creator’s holiday season.
Agencies help do the heavy lifting here: sourcing creators, shaping the concept, aligning brand voice and refining outputs across channels.
Retention Starts in December, Not January
One of the biggest shifts this year? Retention planning that starts mid-Q4, not post-holiday. Small brands are building retention into their holiday campaigns from the jump.
Instead of waiting for January, they’re collecting the right data, tagging audiences properly and prepping segmented follow-up flows (like bounce-back offers, loyalty program invites or new-year exclusives) before the rush even starts.
It’s far easier to turn holiday buyers into 2026 loyalists when you plan ahead and agencies can help architect those retention journeys.
Evergreen Creative With Holiday Layers
Not every brand wants (or needs) heavy holiday imagery. Many small brands are leaning toward evergreen assets that get seasonal accents — subtle color treatments, light-styled product shots or holiday hooks added to already-strong creative.
It’s simple, elegant and easier on your production budget. Even better: it keeps your brand identity intact instead of drowning it in seasonal clichés.
Bring 2025 Holiday Marketing Trends to Life With the Right Agency Through Breef
Trend-watching is easy. Trend-executing? A little trickier, especially when your team is juggling everything from product to fulfillment to end-of-year workflow chaos.
That’s where Breef comes in.
We connect small brands with vetted creative agencies skilled in everything holiday marketing requires.
From campaign development, paid and social creative to livestream production, gift-guide or landing-page design, Breef helps you partner with teams who know how to navigate peak-season pressure.
You bring your goals, timeline and budget. We match you with the partners who can make your holiday marketing on-trend and effective.
Ready to make your 2025 holiday campaigns your strongest yet? Book a demo call with Breef and find your perfect creative partner. 🤝
