Lobsters, love and laughter | Driving sales for Christmas Actually

Driving sales for Australia’s beloved Christmas tradition

No, we’re not carol singers but Aruga was on the doorstep for Christmas Actually in 2025, developing and implementing social advertising campaigns to drive awareness and sales for this beloved silly-season starter in Brisbane, Sydney and the Sunshine Coast.

With a clear goal to deliver a bumper season, Aruga developed the overarching strategy, edited and designed the creative assets and implemented and optimised all activity including META ads and out of home billboards.

Entering the market early in August and securing exceptionally strong sales, Christmas Actually had its first two-week run in Brisbane during its eight years of magic, resulting in the most successful season across all three cities.

Results

3,265,648

impressions across a 5-month campaign

43,425

unique outbound clicks at $0.43 CPC

11.6%

sales increase in Sydney

6.3%

sales increase across all three shows

Deliverables

Strategy development

Developed a five-month social advertising strategy that secured early sales, maintained momentum through spring, before delivering a final push in the lead-up to the event in November and December.

Digital advertising

Ideated, created, implemented and optimised all social media advertising across Facebook and Instagram, including graphic design, video editing, copywriting and technical implementation.

OOH advertising

Designed, booked and delivered a short burst of out of home advertising to drive awareness of the upcoming extended season in Brisbane.

Winning tactics

Creative variation

To deliver consistent sales across a five-month campaign, Aruga needed to develop a range of creative assets, implementing a mix of static and video ads that showcased the event’s USPs throughout the campaign period.

Balancing prospecting and retargeting over time

Through analysis, we identified the unique buying behaviour of Christmas Actually fans, with a high percentage of return visitors, including many who attended the show for all eight seasons. We capitalised on this by leading with a heavy retargeting campaign early, before building our prospecting audience through the middle stages of the campaign.

Consistent sales analysis

We worked closely with The Little Red Company to ensure Aruga maintained consistent oversight of sales and YOY comparisons, enabling us to optimise the campaign to drive the intended sales results.