’Tis the season! Partridges are gathering in pear trees, true loves are gifting turtle doves, and brands are clamoring to help customers count down the days until Christmas—wait, that’s not how the song goes?

Since around the turn of the 20th century, Advent calendars have been a popular holiday tradition to help celebrate the period of Advent, a four-week stretch before Christmas. More classic calendars often held Bible verses behind their doors, but calendars featuring treats like chocolate became available several decades later.

Many of today’s calendars, though, bear little resemblance to the Advent calendars of yore, and brands like Sephora, Williams Sonoma, and even Burger King are offering consumers more than just sweet little treats.

In recent years, consumer brands have released six-, 12-, and 24-day calendars that provide a taste of their product catalogs, which can run the gamut from beauty products to baking supplies to limited-edition collectibles. While tapping into the holiday spirit (and holiday spending) can help boost sales, some brands are leaning into Advent calendar offerings for other reasons, too.

“This is more than just sales for us. It’s really an opportunity for us to excite the customer and surprise them with the robust assortment that we put together,” Amelia Drummond, director of merchandising for hair, sun, and strategic initiatives at luxury beauty brand Bluemercury, told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—JN

The electric vehicle revolution will apparently not be televised.

Automakers like Ford and Nissan have reined in their EV ad spend this year, at least on TV, according to iSpot.

According to the measurement firm, automakers spent 22% less marketing electric vehicles on linear TV in the first 11 months of 2024 than they did in the same period in 2023. These ads also generated roughly 34% fewer impressions in the same period this year compared to last year, meaning fewer people saw them proportionally.

The pullback in spending comes amid an uncertain future for the broader EV market. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to roll back policies supporting the EV transition after he assumes office in late January, and it’s also likely he and his Congressional allies will try to get rid of federal tax credits for EV purchases.

Backing off: The biggest brand pullback came from Nissan, which spent an estimated $129.2 million in the first 11 months of 2023 to promote EVs, including spots for the Nissan Ariya featuring actor Brie Larson. This year, Nissan has spent only $31.4 million on EV ads, a difference of 121%, iSpot found. Nissan declined to comment.

Ford also cut back its ad spend significantly in 2024, iSpot found. The brand, which makes electric vehicles like the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, spent an estimated $101 million on EV ads in the first 11 months of 2023. That dropped down to $55 million in the first 11 months of 2024, iSpot found, a drop of 45% year over year. Ford did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more here.—RB

While Duncan’s Toy Chest, the sprawling New York City toy store from Home Alone 2, tragically doesn’t exist in real life, there’s an actual—albeit much smaller—store which dubs itself the city’s oldest Christmas shop, selling the film’s iconic turtledoves, among many other holiday trimmings.

Christmas Cottage, now nestled on 7th Avenue a few blocks below Central Park in an under 600-square-foot shop, has been selling festive wares since 1985, co-owned by couple Paul and Diane Prianti, with tourists from China to the UK to Brazil flocking to the store every year to secure trinkets for their trees.

“I’m happy to know that the average person thinks, ‘Oh, well, it’s a Christmas shop,’ but we’ve become a destination,” he said.

The shop has seen many iterations. In 1985, a then-single Prianti ran it as a holiday pop-up shop, across Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens for several years, he told Retail Brew. When he met his now-wife and began a family, he realized it was time to settle down in the holiday retail business, too, finally securing a long-term lease at Channel Gardens for 10 years. Then, rent prices rose, and the shop moved to the Wellington Hotel on 7th Avenue in 1997, but was forced out in 2021 as the hotel shuttered amid Covid-19. For a year and a half, Christmas Cottage sold products from a mobile truck, which it now largely uses for advertising, before finding its current location on 7th Avenue between W 53rd and W 54th Street.

Prianti shared what’s kept him—and the shop—going since 1985.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—EC

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