Christmas ads hold a special place in our hearts: festive jingles, stories of connection, and familiar visual cues all evoke a sense of nostalgia that stays in our cultural memory. I had the privilege of leading the testing of some of the UK’s most iconic Christmas campaigns. After moving to Australia, our team applied the same rigorous lens to Australian Christmas campaigns.
While Australian Christmas advertising doesn’t arrive with quite the same national fanfare as new UK launches, it remains one of the most commercially important periods for brands to get right. Stakes are high, budgets are concentrated, and audiences are both emotionally primed and fiercely distracted.
Putting synthetic personas to the test
Following the recent launch of Toluna Synthetic Personas testing, we set ourselves a real-world challenge: Could synthetic audiences meaningfully evaluate and differentiate between 25 Christmas AV campaigns aired in Australia?
Rather than focusing on novelty, we grounded the assessment in the same principles we’ve used for decades of human-based ad testing. At Toluna, we use ACT Instant AI to measure advertising effectiveness across two core dimensions:
Breakthrough
The ability to capture and command attention, encoding brand and message into memory. In an era of dual screening, shorter attention spans, and relentless media noise, this is non-negotiable. You can have a beautiful story, but if it doesn’t cut through, you’re simply wasting your media investment.
Response
The ability to connect with viewers, both emotionally and rationally, in ways that drive brand action across the short AND long term. This is where storytelling, relevance, and brand meaning combine to create real commercial impact.
Across the 25 ads tested, one campaign clearly rose to the top. LEGO’s Christmas ad, If it’s play you’re looking for? brings the season to life through a joyful holiday choir made up entirely of LEGO minifigures. The ad brings together characters from across different LEGO worlds in a playful celebration of togetherness. They say that music itself is pure emotion, and set to the instantly recognizable soundtrack, Hello – Is It Me You’re Looking For by Lionel Richie, the ad leans into nostalgia – the warmth and emotional familiarity of the song – to drive viewer connection and sentiment.
As more figures join in, the performance builds on individual moments of play to create a collective, feel-good chorus, amplifying both charm and emotional impact. The contrast between the miniature LEGO scale and the crescendo payoff creates strong festive breakthrough, reinforcing LEGO’s role as a catalyst for creativity, connection and shared joy during the moments that matter most.
The result? Earning the #1 spot, beating even Coca Cola’s Holidays are coming and Uber’s Holiday Story.
Through their ad, LEGO stayed true to what it stands for, while appealing to a broad audience through showcasing many different figurine franchises. As humans, we have an affinity for the familiar, and LEGO played to this brilliantly. Congratulations to all involved on what turned out to be a cracking Christmas ad.
We tested the Christmas ads in batches, with each set taking only hours to evaluate quantitatively. With this ability to test at speed and at scale, it’s clear that synthetic personas are tipping the scales in market research, enabling researchers to shift from “Can we afford to test?” to “Why would we risk not testing?”
Curious to know how Toluna Synthetic Personas evaluated the rest of Australia’s Christmas advertising? We’ll be unpacking and sharing more insights soon, so stay tuned!
For now, I wish you a happy new year. Here’s to 2026!
