The holiday season is typically the most important time of year for retailers. It’s where most of their sales come from, and they often invest in the splashiest creative campaigns to capitalize on it.
But the pool of reference they can draw on can be frustratingly limited. There are only so many variations of candy canes and snowmen one can come up with. That’s why for Nordstrom’s holiday campaign this year, the team decided to swerve. The campaign’s main focus is the iconic musician David Bowie.
Nordstrom has an exclusive partnership with the Bowie estate to create merchandise tied to the deceased singer’s upcoming 80th birthday. Since the birthday is in January, it made sense to combine the two occasions. The result is a campaign featuring two young dancers who surprise their family on Christmas morning with an impromptu dance routine set to Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” The routine is choreographed by Nina McNeely, who has worked with artists including Doja Cat and films like Gaspar Noé’s “Climax.”
The campaign knowingly sidesteps tired holiday clichés. At the beginning of the spot, as “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” plays, one character begs for different music.
“For us, there’s a notion of, ‘How do you cut through the noise when everything is candy canes and snowmen?'” said Olivia Kim, svp of brand creative at Nordstrom. “There are these traditions around the holidays that can be repetitive, so the idea was to have this breakout thing that shakes it up.”
The holiday shopping season has historically been a major sales driver for Nordstrom. In 2024, the fourth quarter accounted for close to 30% of the company’s annual revenue. Nordstrom went private last year and stopped reporting financial figures publicly, but sales reportedly grew by 7% last year compared to the year before, surpassing its previous peak in 2019.
With the holiday season so important, though, one challenge retailers like Nordstrom face is staggering their holiday campaigns and merchandising when Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year’s and other winter holidays are all packed into a tight window of time.
Kim told Glossy that a bit of “timing voodoo” is needed to balance when certain things release, and that Nordstrom often changes it up year by year based on how consumers are behaving. For instance, this year, Nordstrom launched an online gift-giving hub on October 1, in response to shoppers starting to buy holiday gifts months in advance. But the holiday Bowie campaign is only launching now, at the beginning of November. Other efforts, like holiday window dressing and decorations in-store, will come closer to December, while things like photos with Santa Claus won’t launch until close to Christmas Day.
Part of getting the timing right is planning well in advance. Kim said the team is already working on 2027 holiday ideas and brainstorming for 2028. The brand and creative team works with merchandising early to ensure that the campaigns and the product are in sync. That’s what allowed the Bowie collection to be featured in the holiday campaign, since both were in development last year. Then, timing decisions can be made based on consumer behavior, like customers shopping for the holidays earlier each year. CNET’s annual holiday shopping survey, released earlier this month, showed that just under one-third of Americans are starting their holiday shopping before November 1.
“Holiday timing is a moving target,” Kim said. “We don’t always get it right. From a timing perspective, we’re trying to show up right when it’s most relevant for the customer. Some people like to shop early, so we have our gift suite ready for them early. But the holidays are coming earlier and earlier, so we’re trying to be flexible, not come across as tone deaf, and celebrate one holiday at a time.”
