Three lifelong friends sit on a snowy bench watching children sledding. One of the women fires up her Amazon app and orders three sled-worthy seat cushions.
A few days later the cushions arrive, and before you can say “it’s festive advertising time” the three friends are barreling down the slope with grins that threaten to outshine the Christmas lights. A string version of the tender Beatles classic “In My Life” plays as the old friends are briefly, magically, transformed into children once again.
If the spot feels comfortingly familiar, it’s because it is. “Joy Ride” debuted back in 2023 and quickly found footing as Amazon’s most lauded holiday effort. Developed by Amazon’s in-house creative team and production house Hungry Man, “Joy Ride” marked a departure from outside agency Lucky Generals for the season.
According to research firm System1, the ad was not only Amazon’s most effective of all time, it tested almost off the scale for emotional resonance and brand building.
But what makes the ad interesting now is that Amazon has decided to bring it back as its main emotional brand-building commercial for 2025. While some in the industry might regard the move as a backward step or a signal of creative exhaustion on the part of Amazon, it very much signals a brand and a marketing team who know their advertising onions.
Why tried and true works
For several years, effectiveness scholars have been noting that despite a desperate desire for newness on the part of clients and agencies, existing ads often outperform the new ones created to replace them.
Last year, for example, research firm Kantar measured all the U.K. Christmas ads on long-term brand building effectiveness and short-term sales impact. The winners were KFC, Coca-Cola, and Cadbury. No surprise there given the three champions are among the biggest spending, smartest advertisers on the planet.
But what made their superiority startling was that all three triumphed with existing ads that — like Amazon’s current regifted classic — had run in previous seasons.
The core message is that marketers get sick of their ads much quicker than consumers do. In fact, it’s apparent that most ads are being pulled and replaced long before they have the chance to reach their maximum potential. The reason? Marketers spend weeks or months creating a new ad. Once it hits the market, they are already sick of it and keen to make something new. But the data on effectiveness and longevity suggests many campaigns could and should run for years.
We are taking our cakes out of the oven far too early in this industry. Partly because we like making new stuff. Partly because we aren’t attuned to the consumers we target. And mostly because we are not paying attention to the effectiveness literature that shows, very clearly, the benefit of what advertising expert Andrew Tindall refers to as compound creativity: Companies that change less usually enjoy more success.
