From Burger King to Chanel, brands can’t get enough of the Advent calendar trend

’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.

Routine excitement

Bluemercury’s Advent calendar is a little bit different than most. Rather than the more typical six, 12, or 24 hidden products, the beauty retailer packages 31 products from brands like Pat McGrath Labs and La Mer together for its 31 Days of Dazzle calendar, with “as many travel and full-sized products as possible,” Drummond said.

Drummond said the decision to go with 31 days of gifts was designed to be inclusive of consumers from all religious backgrounds by counting down to the New Year. Beyond that, the extended gift offerings can also extend the time the customer and any potential social media viewers spend with the calendar, creating more opportunities to connect with them through the single purchase, Drummond said.

The repeated, daily interaction that comes with an Advent calendar can serve to create a customer connection, according to Joep Leussink, head of growth at AddEvent, a digital calendar company. "It’s very ritualistic, and therefore it’s very engaging,” Leussink told Marketing Brew. “People wake up, they open a calendar, [for] some people, the first minute of the new day.”

For brands like Burger King, the act of offering an Advent calendar in itself served as a novel way to engage with customers. The fast-food chain is the first major QSR brand to get in on the Advent calendar trend, according to Zahra Nurani, VP of marketing communications at Burger King, and the calendar offers themed trinkets like a Whopper ornament, holiday candles, and a snow globe, culminating with a BK-branded digital camera.

“The Advent calendar is just such a nice way to continue to surprise and delight our guests with a various lineup of treats, things that are a nod to nostalgic pieces of the brand, like our BK Kids Club and the Stout King, as well as leaning into what are a lot of our fan favorites,” Nurani said.

Burger King’s calendar sold out within minutes, and the hype around the calendar has led to more than 700 earned media placements and more than 2.2 billion potential impressions, according to Nurani. Bluemercury’s 31 Days of Dazzle calendar sold out within three weeks, and the company said that the average order value for orders placed by customers returning after purchasing the Advent calendar is twice as much as its standard customer average order value.

A social media snowstorm

Work can start on Advent calendars up to 18 months in advance, Drummond said, and a portion of planning for both Bluemercury and Burger King was devoted to social media. It’s easy to see why: #adventcalendar on TikTok has 1.1 million posts featuring unboxing videos of Advent calendars from brands like Dior, Bonne Maman, Victoria’s Secret, and Vaseline.

Both Bluemercury and Burger King gifted influencers to support their Advent calendar rollouts, and both prioritized creators who had been long-time fans or consistently engaged with their products previously. This specific parameter gave Bluemercury the chance to express gratitude toward those influencers, and it mirrored the intention behind the calendar in the first place: a bundle of “high-value” products that Drummond said serve as a way to “say thank you to our loyal clients.”

Hidden gifts and daily offerings also allow brands to lean into the continually popular category of unboxing videos. “I love always watching our guests’ content and the content of our fans,” Murani said. “And as you see some of the unboxings of the Advent calendar, and what items are each individual person’s favorite items…it’s kind of like the gift that keeps on giving.”

As with most anything on social media, though, brands creating Advent calendars may also find themselves navigating potential negative reactions—which, in the case of advent calendars, often revolve around the perceived value of the products inside. This year, Sephora offered an Advent calendar redeemable for 2,500 reward points (typically the equivalent of $2,500) that has been received less than positively, and in 2021, Chanel came under fire for its $825 Advent calendar that some deemed a “joke” for including items like stickers and temporary tattoos.

Despite the potential for bad press, some marketers said it’s worth the risk.

“There are always a lot of opinions, and personally, as the person who kind of leads the strategy on creating these, I love any and all feedback,” Drummond said. “Having that really eye-catching marketing opportunity during this time of year, when there’s so much going on, it does outweigh the fear that it’s not going to be well-received.”