For this week’s AdMiration feature, we looked at consumer response to TK Maxx’s “Festive Crossing” ad — the latest chapter in the retailer’s Festive Farm Christmas campaign, starring a very stylish family of ducks.
Read on to get our 3-2-1 snapshot of the ad (3 facts, 2 learnings and 1 reflection) and learn how their ad was received based on our data.
The ad opens on a snowy country road, where the farmer and his wife from TK Maxx’s Festive Farm are driving home in their truck. The back is piled high with red TK Maxx bags, while the familiar alpaca and goat stand among them, watching the road.
The truck stops as a dressed-up duck with sunglasses and a hat steps out in front of it. Then the rest of the family follows, strutting across the road in sweaters, scarves and boots, carrying handbags and gifts, right down to the littlest duck pulling a toy duck of its own.
The farmer looks at the parade in confusion and asks his wife whether she told the neighbors about TK Maxx. And of course she did — after all, everyone loves a bargain. As the line “Spoil all your loved ones for less” plays, the ducks head through the farm gates and the gates close on the TK Maxx logo.
Let your characters carry the proposition. TK Maxx’s offer is breadth and value, or in other words, something for everyone for less. Instead of explicitly listing products or departments, the ad dresses each duck for a different kind of shopper, from the fashionista with her handbag, hat and sunglasses to the fitness fan with a yoga mat and the little darling pulling a toy duck. The ducks are also the main reason people find the ad funny and they shape how people see the brand. “For everyone” is the attribute people most often say the ad communicates about TK Maxx (54%) and 43% say it communicates “offers a wide variety of products.” As one viewer put it: “Making the family's animals really puts the point across that there is something for everyone.”
End on a warm feeling tied to your core promise. Laughter leads the emotional response for most of the ad, while love sits in line with the norm (Love: 26% vs. 28% norm). But what matters is that the warm feelings peak at the end of the ad. The couple’s closing exchange builds the bargain message into the story, while the slogan repeats it straight after. And that’s the moment love overtakes laughter as the strongest reaction. So the good feeling people leave with is attached to TK Maxx’s value promise, with 46% saying the ad communicates that TK Maxx is “affordable.” But importantly, the brand isn’t low quality. The point is that the ducks were able to find great products at reasonable prices.
Is your next Christmas ad a new idea or the next chapter of one?
While there are many long-running consistent Christmas campaigns from brands like Aldi and Coca-Cola, plenty of brands start from scratch every year. This year TK Maxx brings back something that worked from the past but with some new elements that keep it feeling fresh.
Festive Farm launched in 2023, introducing a farmer, his wife and their stylish animals. It was set to Eve and Gwen Stefani’s “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” and closed on the “Spoil all your loved ones for less” line.
In 2024, TK Maxx brought the same film back and built around it with plush toys and social content. “Festive Crossing” picks up the story in 2026 with the same couple and some of the same animals, another early-2000s track and the same closing line, putting the ducks at the center of the ad this time.
Across our research, we tend to see that the strongest campaigns keep the core and refresh the execution, which is what TK Maxx does by keeping the farm, the couple and the closing line while giving the ducks a bigger role.
It also sticks in people’s minds:
So ask yourself: what’s the core of your Christmas advertising that’s worth keeping, and what could you refresh to make it feel new each year?
About the campaign
“Festive Crossing” was created by Wieden+Kennedy London and directed by Gary Freedman, set to Ciara’s “Goodies.” It’s the follow-up to Festive Farm, the Christmas world TK Maxx and W+K introduced in 2023, and it builds on the retailer’s “Spoil All Your Loved Ones For Less” platform.
The campaign launched in November with the 30-second film across video on demand, online video and social, ahead of a TV debut in prime-time slots later this month. A 60-second version runs on YouTube and TK Maxx’s owned channels, with behind-the-scenes content and bloopers on Instagram and TikTok.
The strategy speaks to shoppers who are spending carefully this Christmas and looking for good deals on thoughtful and quality gifts. Catrina Funk, Group Brand and Marketing Director at TK Maxx, says the brand wants to show “that you can make your Christmas budget go further without compromising on quality.”
The film sits within wider Christmas activity promoting TK Maxx’s big-brand gifts, quality, range and value, extended through social, influencer partnerships and amplification across the season.
Before we dive in, it’s worth calling out that we used our newly released curated norm for this year’s analysis. This is different from the norm we used for our analysis of Christmas ads in the past, so you can’t compare directly with prior results.
Why this approach? Many research businesses are built on massive normative databases. Their size gives them authority and offers reassurance to advertisers. But the larger the dataset, the slower it becomes to adapt. New trends won’t quickly shift the weight of historical averages. Plus, the data is primarily their customers’ ad data, which isn’t necessarily reflective of the market as a whole.
We are the only pre-testing company that invests significantly in creating a curated norm that:
We use this norm because it ensures our data provides the most accurate, relevant and actionable insights possible.
Now let’s get into the performance.
“Festive Crossing” lands in the top third of UK ads for its ability to drive short-term sales and performs just outside the top third for building long-term brand equity (Sales Impact: 71; Brand Impact: 66).
The ad lands even better with women who make up a large share of visitors to TK Maxx’s website (Women Sales Impact: 84, Women Brand Impact: 80).
People find it more distinctive than the average UK ad and it grabs their attention (Ad Distinctiveness: 3.9 vs. 3.7 norm, Claimed Attention: 4.1 vs. 3.8 norm).
Women also come away seeing TK Maxx as more different from other department stores and feeling the ad could only be for TK Maxx (Women Brand Distinctiveness: 3.9 vs. 3.6 norm; Women Uniqueness of Brand Impressions: 4.0 vs. 3.8 norm).
The dressed-up ducks and the upbeat soundtrack do a great job at setting it apart from other ads. Some people said:
All of this makes for an ad people enjoy watching (Enjoyment: 4.0 vs. 3.8 norm) and one that resonates strongly (Overall Emotion: 58 vs. 49 norm).
The stand-out emotion here is laughter, with 14% naming it as the main feeling the ad leaves them with, nearly three times the norm (Laughter: 14% vs. 5% norm). And the ducks are the main reason why people find it so funny — which is particularly important because the ducks represent the different product categories at TK Maxx. This gives the brand a role in the story — most importantly — a role in the humor.
The laughter starts as soon as the first duck steps into the road in its sunglasses and climbs as the rest of the family struts across, staying high for almost the entire crossing.
They’re what people mention most when asked what they liked, with the outfits and the attitude winning them over:
Love rises alongside it as the little ones follow their mother, then peaks again at the end as “Spoil all your loved ones for less” plays and the TK Maxx logo arrives. Most importantly, the ad’s warmest moment lands on the brand’s slogan, meaning the good feeling it creates is tied directly to TK Maxx and its promise of gifts for less.
Ciara’s “Goodies” sets the ad’s upbeat and playful tone, giving the ducks’ strut its rhythm (Musical Appeal: 4.0 vs. 3.7 norm). For some it also brings a flash of nostalgia: “The song reminded me of when I was a teenager and the lyrics were relevant to the ad.”
The duck family also sums up what TK Maxx is all about. Each duck shows off a different department of the store: one wears a bathrobe, another has a luxury bag, hat and sunglasses, another carries a yoga mat and the last drags a toy duck along behind it. Together, they capture the breadth of TK Maxx’s range without having to list it and remind viewers that there’s something for everyone.
As a result, more than half of viewers say the ad communicates that TK Maxx is “for everyone” (54%) and many pick up on value and range too: “affordable” (46%) and “offers a wide variety of products” (43%) are among the top attributes.
Thinking about what the ad is trying to convey, people said things like:
What a stylish return to the Festive Farm from TK Maxx! Putting the whole store on parade, one dressed-up duck at a time, is an excellent way to show off everything the store has to offer.
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