One season, many stories: Bringing Christmas from global to local

When you see the first star on Christmas Eve, what do you do? If your answer is “nothing,” you’re probably not in Poland. 

There, the appearance of the first star marks the start of Christmas, the moment families gather at the table, share wafers [oplatek, thin wafers traditionally shared in Poland before the Christmas Eve dinner] and begin the celebrations. 

When I lived in Prague, Christmas was marked by another tradition: the golden pig. According to Czech folklore, if you fast all day on Christmas Eve, you’ll be rewarded by seeing a golden pig. The story was immortalised in Kofola’s Christmas ad, a little girl, her father, and a pig that decides it’s had enough of being the festive reward. It’s charming, strange, local… and unforgettable.

When brands embrace local traditions, they tap into something universal: the human need for belonging and recognition.

That’s the magic of Christmas: it’s one season, told through many stories. Local traditions, languages, and rituals shape how billions of people experience the holidays – and for brands, that presents both an opportunity and a challenge. How do you celebrate a global moment without flattening it into sameness? How do you honour local culture without losing the thread of a unified brand identity?

The answer, I believe, lies in authenticity. The joy of Christmas isn’t in its scale, it’s in its specificity. When brands embrace local traditions, they tap into something universal: the human need for belonging and recognition.

Above: The soft drinks brand Kofola immortalised the Czech festive legend of the golden piglet apparition.

In an increasingly interconnected world, success depends on understanding both the macro view of a region and the micro realities of individual markets, getting the balance right can be powerful. 

Take ALDI Spain’s Christmas campaign. Under the concept of Team Christmas, the brand promoted its range of toys by celebrating the value of playing together – which addressed the issue in Spain of over-gifted child syndrome, where 58 per cent of parents admit their kids receive more presents than they need.

As Elda Farran, the campaign’s creative supervisor, put it: “The values we’re promoting mirror those of ALDI toys — they’re educational, sustainable, imaginative. But above all, we wanted to promote solidarity — a brave message in such a consumer-driven season.”

The success of the ad proved when brands invest in both regional insight and local nuance, they don’t just adapt – they connect.

Above: Aldi Spain's Christmas campaign tackled issues troubling Spanish families – over-indulged children and unequal sharing of household chores. 

Look at Coca-Cola’s Create Real Magic campaign. Consumers could scan a Christmas bottle, chat with a digital Santa in 45+ languages, and generate personalised snow globe animations from their own memories. 

In London, an interactive Piccadilly Lights experience let passers
by speak with Santa via AI. Across the world, the Coca-Cola Caravan continued its global tour, but each stop had its own local flavour.

The most powerful global ideas are those that make space for local emotion and behaviour.

Similarly, Philips’ Refurbished Products campaign showcased how a brand can use festive-season sentiment and cultural insight to shift consumer behaviour. 

Though the initiative launched in Spring, during Earth Day, it was refreshed with a festive iteration when gift-giving and consumption peaks. Philips tapped into national conversations around sustainability that resonate differently across regions. In Germany, the message leaned into national pride in circular innovation – grounding a global sustainability initiative in local cultural values.

Above: Philips long-term #BetterThanNew initiative promotes refurbished products year-round, but especially during the holiday season.

The brilliance of both campaigns wasn’t in the tech or scale, but in how they let culture lead. Coca-Cola and Philips held onto their festive essence – joy, generosity, gifting – but gave local teams the freedom to express it in ways that felt truly native.

In this attention challenged landscape, when a piece of work resonates in a community, even briefly, it has done something profound.

Brand discovery today can happen anywhere, on an Instagram thread, in an online review, or during a stroll through a regional Christmas market. The challenge of maintaining consistency has never been greater.

The brands that succeed aren’t those that try to control every expression but those that give their identity room to breathe. That means building brand toolkits that are flexible frameworks, not rulebooks. Empowered local creativity is the heartbeat of a global brand.

For marketers and clients, we need to abandon the “statue in the town square” mindset, the belief that one grand campaign can stand timelessly on a pedestal. The truth is, everything now is fleeting. Research by the University of California, Irvine, and Microsoft Research, shows that over the last 20 years, the average time that a person can focus on one thing has dropped from around 2½ minutes to around 45 seconds. So in this attention challenged landscape, when a piece of work resonates in a community, even briefly, it has done something profound.