Have you ever agreed to three holiday dinners in a single weekend, only to realize you still have to buy six gifts and somehow bake the elaborate dessert you volunteered for? Suddenly, being festive is exhausting.
So I have to give Glossier credit for calling its holiday campaign "Have Yourself a Merry Little Meltdown," because, girl, I get it. As TheIndustry.Beauty reported, the brand is building this year’s campaign around the season's less polished side, with a film launching November 6. It’s a welcome change from being shown another holiday that looks considerably more organized than yours.
The campaign features four personalities: The Host, The Perfectionist, The Overcommitted, and The Introvert, played by four creatives with connections to New York. Depending on how December goes, I could make a case for being several of these in the same afternoon.
You don’t have to dislike the holidays to get the joke. You can enjoy having people over and still be exhausted by the time they arrive. You can look forward to a party and spend the last hour before leaving wondering why you said yes. There’s room for both, without turning the whole thing into a serious conversation about burnout.
For a beauty brand, that’s an interesting place to start. Rather than asking me to imagine how glamorous I could be at every event, Glossier is making room for the possibility that I’m tired, running late and doing my makeup in whatever time is left. I find that much easier to relate to than another invitation to become my most dazzling festive self.
But the best part is what happens after the joke. Glossier has organized its gift guide around those same personalities, alongside conventional options such as shopping by price. The Host’s selection includes candles and hand cream; The Introvert’s includes skincare, body care, and a hoodie. The characters actually help organize the shopping experience.
That gives someone a way into the assortment without needing to know much about beauty. You might not know your friend’s preferred serum, but you certainly know she starts planning her next dinner party before the current one is over. A personality gives you a place to start.
These categories are also very shareable. I can imagine sending The Overcommitted to a friend with a this is you before I would send her a product page. The brand gives people something to say to each other, which, to me, is a much better reason to share an advertisement than being told to tag three friends.
The approach fits with how Glossier has recently described its direction. In an interview with On Brand Magazine, chief marketing officer Nicole Solórzano said the company wanted to stop chasing product trends and return to what made the brand recognizable. She pointed to Boy Brow as a product that doesn’t require perfectly groomed brows to begin with. That makes the holiday idea more convincing to me. A little less perfection should feel familiar coming from Glossier. It would be a harder message to believe from a brand that spent the rest of the year telling customers to correct every visible detail.
The products keep things playful, too. The holiday assortment includes miniature fragrances and Balm Dotcom flavors called Toasty Nuts and Just Baked. Sometimes a beauty product can be enjoyable without promising to improve your entire life.
That loosely connects to what interests me in my own doctoral research. People have described their recurring beauty and grooming routines as helping them feel calm, prepared, or more like themselves. Those accounts make me interested in the few familiar minutes someone takes for themselves, rather than assuming beauty's value always lies in a dramatic transformation.
A holiday campaign doesn’t need to explain all of that. But I like the idea of beauty fitting into an imperfect day, rather than becoming another part of the day you’re supposed to get right.
Not everyone loved the execution, though. In a Reddit discussion about Glossier’s holiday imagery, some people questioned how staged the photos looked, especially the awkward product placements. One commenter joked about someone baking while holding a lip balm in one hand and a spatula in the other. I can see why people found it funny, but at the end of the day, it is still an advertisement. I don't think every scene needs to look completely natural for the idea behind it to work.
I like what Glossier is doing here. The holidays can be exciting, exhausting, stressful, and fun, sometimes all in the same day. Instead of pretending everyone has a perfectly magical December, Glossier is having a little fun with the reality. I think it's refreshing that a beauty brand can laugh at the pressure to have everything together, especially during a season when we're constantly encouraged to make everything look perfect.
Dania Khalife
