Building a Holiday Brand Identity Like Coca-Cola

Why This Matters

The run-up to Christmas can make or break a business year. For most brands, December goes far beyond switching to tinsel-themed banners and hoping for the best. It’s a scramble for attention, with every company from tiny online shops to high-street titans vying for a place in the holiday shopping basket. If you fail to stand out, you blend into background noise and miss out on the biggest spending surge of the year.

Having a recognisable, emotionally charged holiday identity is more than fancy branding. Your products end up on wish lists and dinner tables while your competitors’ collect dust. Coca-Cola has achieved this for generations. When you see their classic Santa, the contour bottle, and you hear those jingles you can hum out of muscle memory, you’re watching expert ads that showcase how to build holiday brand recognition and turn that into real pound notes.

Many businesses waste time and money experimenting with new themes every season, confusing their customers and diluting their impact. By putting in the right system, you save marketing budget, sharpen your campaign focus, and start building traditions that customers look forward to every year.

Common Pitfalls

If you want your brand to become part of the festive ritual, it helps to avoid these classic missteps:

• Chasing trends over creating traditions: One year it’s snow globes, next year it’s elves, then a random celebrity. Customers can’t connect if you keep changing your “face”.
• Skipping sound: People remember a catchy tune far longer than they remember a slogan. Many brands ignore this, missing out on a powerful memory hook.
• Treating the holidays like a short campaign: If you just slap on a reindeer for three weeks, you’re not building anything lasting.
• Forgetting retail presence: Digital gets all the buzz, but holiday decisions are still mostly made where people fill their shopping baskets.
• Pretending small tweaks count as strategy: Swapping red for green or adding a snowflake won’t make your brand iconic. You need more than clip art.
• Going too generic: If you could erase your logo and any brand could run the same ad or promo, you’re doing it wrong.

Holiday marketing involves creating something customers recognise, trust, and, if you get it just right, actually look forward to.

Step-by-Step Fix

1. Lock Down Your Three Holiday Symbols

Consistency, not originality for the sake of it, is your strongest weapon. Pick one character, one object, and one sound to anchor every festive campaign. These are your calling cards.

Pick a Character:
You need someone or something that can “star” in your holiday storytelling. Think Coca-Cola’s Santa—he’s theirs, even though they didn’t invent him. For smaller brands, that could be a mascot, a recurring friendly face from your team in a festive getup, or even an animal if you’re in the pet sector.

Choose an Object:
What physical thing screams “your brand” every December? For some, it’s quirky packaging. For others, it’s a unique seasonal product or a certain gift wrap. Make it visible everywhere and in every asset.

Settle on a Sound:
Earworms win. Maybe it’s a homegrown jingle, bell chimes, or a musical phrase that matches your brand’s energy. Don’t just play “Jingle Bells” and call it a day. It needs to be ownable.

Real example: John Lewis built their Christmas brand around big ballads sung by feather-voiced indie musicians. You don’t remember the lyrics, but you remember the feeling.

2. Connect Your Brand to Real-World Winter Rituals

Looking festive is only the start. Your brand should become part of what people actually do in December.

Spot the Rituals:
Gift shopping, tree decorating, winter walks, sending cards, wrapping gifts with a mild sense of panic as the last post deadline ticks closer—that’s just a sampling.

Find Your Angle:
Where does what you offer connect with what your customers are doing? A chocolatier might become part of Advent calendar rituals. A garden centre could lean into Christmas tree pick-up weekends. Digital services can run a “12 days” campaign with new tips or offers daily.

Make It Tangible:
Coca-Cola followed up their TV ads with in-person experiences. They sent actual lorries, decorated from head to tail, on tour. Thousands of families now visit the “Christmas truck” every year. Maybe you run a special festive event, sponsor a local pageant, or set up a hot-chocolate stand outside your store.

3. Create Reusable Traditions, Not One-Off Stunts

Almost anyone can launch a big campaign for a few weeks. Long-term gains and magic happen when you build traditions people look forward to repeating.

Focus on Repetition:
A “12 Deals of Christmas” promotion becomes memorable by happening every December. If you introduce a limited-edition product, bring it back each year, even if you change it only slightly.

Make It Shareable:
Can customers participate, collect, or share their experience? Maybe it’s a holiday recipe contest run every year, a festive loyalty card, or an online advent treasure hunt.

Evolve Gently:
Small evolutions, new stories, or guest stars are fine, but the bones of the tradition should stay put. That way, loyal customers get a rush of nostalgia, and new ones understand there’s something worth returning for.

4. Tighten Your Visual and Retail Presence

You can have all the clever content in the world, but attention is scarce on the high street and online. Your brand should be impossible to miss.

Seasonal Packaging Done Right:
Don’t waste money on extravagant box redesigns if your customers won’t see it. Sometimes a simple sleeve or sticker does the trick. If you sell online, update your website banners, product images, and even your email footer to feature your three symbols and holiday palette.

Physical Displays Matter:
If you’re in bricks-and-mortar retail, now’s not the time for subtlety. Window displays, signage, or a festive shelf strip decorated with your icon object works wonders. Check the ‘eye level is buy level’ rule.

Consistency is Queen:
Whether it’s a poster at a garden centre or an Instagram story, your look (and those core symbols) should never contradict each other. A joined-up visual identity helps shoppers instantly recognise you in a crowded field.

5. Make Sound Work Hard for You

Most brands leave this to chance, but relying on luck with sound is a mistake. Humans are tuned to remember catchy hooks, especially when paired with emotion.

Craft a Memorable Jingle or Soundtrack:
You don’t need to write “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. Even two bars of music or a short sound logo (think Intel’s five-note ‘bong’) can do the job.

Use It Everywhere:
From the hold music on your phone line to reels, TV spots, radio ads, and even pay point sounds if you’re clever. As long as it’s repeated and recognisable, it sticks.

Make It Tie Back to Your Brand:
If your brand stands for luxury, think gentle piano. If you sell to families, focus on warmth and a hint of nostalgia. Avoid using generic stock music.

What Most People Miss

Building a holiday presence hinges on sticking with your key symbols and doing so with discipline every year. Subtle changes like fresh storylines, new faces, or a jingle variation can work, but the “DNA” stays the same. Customers want reassurance and nostalgia at Christmas, not a brand identity crisis.

Many businesses focus only on sales and offers, missing out on the emotional rituals that make the season special. If your brand story is only “Buy this now!”, you’re shouting into a blizzard. Connect with shared cultural traditions to gain more traction year after year.

The Bigger Picture

Integrating holiday traditions into your marketing goes beyond chasing December sales. This approach establishes your brand as a genuine part of people’s best seasonal moments. The following year, your core audience will expect and look forward to your festive content, your packaging, your event, or even your jingle that neighbours might poke fun at, but would miss if it disappeared.

Over time, this sustained loyalty reduces the time, creative energy, and marketing budget you need. Your brand becomes something families trust and recommend, and even argue for when it’s time to write the Christmas shopping list.

If you get this right, you can carry those elements through the entire year. John Lewis, for example, has carried their emotional storytelling from Christmas into Valentine’s, summer sales, and other occasions.

Wrap-Up

To make your brand as unmissable at Christmas as the tune of Slade echoing through every supermarket, focus on three strong symbols, connect with real rituals, create memorable and repeatable traditions, and make sure your efforts reach every channel, including audio.

It comes down to presence, consistency, and making a mark that aligns so closely with the season that customers think of you as soon as they feel that first chill in the air.

Want more systems like this for your business? Join Pixelhaze Academy for free at https://www.pixelhaze.academy/membership.

Jargon Buster

Brand Symbols
Recognisable elements (like characters, sounds, or objects) used by a company to make their brand instantly memorable.

Seasonal Packaging
Product packaging created for a specific time of year so it ties in with a holiday or event and catches the shopper’s eye.

Digital Presence
How visible and active your brand is online, including your website, social media accounts, paid ads, and review sites.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I choose the right holiday brand symbols if I’m a small business?
Start by reviewing what has already resonated with your customers in past years—a staff character in a daft hat, a much-loved product, a phrase people repeat. Build from that, rather than inventing abstract icons from scratch. If in doubt, use customer feedback to test a shortlist.

What are some practical ways to link my brand to festive rituals?
Find out what your customers actually do each December—from tree shopping to last-minute wrapping. Can your brand help, reward, or celebrate those activities? Even a digital countdown or photo contest linked to their traditions can make your brand feel involved.

I’m worried creating a new tradition will flop. How do I get customers to buy in?
Start small. Run the same event or offer at the same time every year. Use photos and stories from your first attempt as social proof next time. It takes a couple of years of repetition but eventually, customers “own” it and may even protest if you change it.

Is retail presence that important if I mostly sell online?
Absolutely—especially if you sell goods that end up in physical baskets or under a tree. But make sure your online shop front matches the festive energy: banners, product photography, and even order confirmation emails all add to the effect.

Do I really need a jingle?
You don’t have to hire a songwriter, but consistent sound cues work. Even a short motif, played in every video, ad, and social post, makes a huge difference. If music isn’t right for your brand, a particular style of voice or wording repeated often can have a similar effect.

Let Pixelhaze help you take your holiday branding from something forgettable to the gift everyone talks about. Discover what else you can create: Pixelhaze Academy Membership.