2026 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Ahead of The Holidays of 2025, Sephora Canada stepped into the noisiest marketing window of the year – and one that is a must win sales window for the brand. The holiday season is a battleground of gifting campaigns, with every retailer, marketplace, and loyalty program flooding feeds, inboxes, OOH, and TV with urgency driven offers and emotional storytelling.

Beauty had become an increasingly competitive landscape, crowded with credible alternatives winning on convenience, loyalty and promotion.

So this year, the strategic challenge was clear: make Sephora Canada the reliable gifting destination for everyone, not just the beauty fluent. By removing the intimidation factor and replacing the guesswork with clarity, the brand caught gifter’s attention across the country during the noisiest and most promotionally aggressive window of the year.

Gifters, and the broader national audience showed them it worked.

The holidays are a must win sales window for Sephora. But each year, the holiday season brings an avalanche of messaging from brands, all competing for consumer’s ever decreasing attention spans. So this year, Sephora needed to do something that would break through the clutter and solidify themselves as an ideal gift giving destination with all Canadians.

Every holiday season, Sephora stores are not only packed with beauty lovers, but also those shopping for beauty lovers on their list – they’re uneducated and intimidated with the beauty world, and could use a little help getting the perfect gift.

Introducing: “Holiday Hints” – a campaign that garnered nationwide attention by turning real responses from beauty lovers into cheeky, not-so-subtle OOH and guerilla hints, aimed directly at the people shopping for them to ensure the perfect Sephora gift landed under the tree.

They started with a simple call for submissions on Sephora’s socials – “Send us your top Sephora must-haves, and you could be featured in something big this holiday season”. The agency worked directly with Sephora lovers to learn their dream gifts, and who they wanted them from.

Then, they shared their wishes across the country in big and bold ways. They strategically targeted more than 800 not-so-subtle hints across the country in OOH and guerilla placements, addressed to gifters, detailing what their loved one wanted for the holidays. From pizza boxes to door wraps and digital trucks, they unabashedly spread beauty lovers' dream gifts out in the open for all.

To share the campaign further, the agency featured curated influencer’s placements and their recipients’ reactions on social for all to experience.

The campaigns’ cheeky and clever tone captured the attention of millions, making Sephora top of mind during the most important sales window.

The strategic planner is responsible for being the voice of the consumer, and ensuring the message will land with them. On a brand like Sephora, it’s easy to assume the target would always be beauty lovers in varying degrees. But during the holiday season, an uneducated and beauty-intimidated audience walks the aisles of Sephora. After doing a deep dive into their unique differences and need states during the holidays, the planner identified a unique insight true to this gifting audience – they know there’s a Sephora product the beauty lover in their life would love, but they need some help to find it.

The campaign saw a huge success all across Canada, and delivered double-digit lifts across brand consideration (25 percentage points overall, 27percentage points gifters), brand favourability (20 percentage points) and ‘Sephora as an ideal gift giving destination’ (33 percentage points overall, 36 percentage points gifters).

Beyond brand consideration, favourability and ‘ideal gift giving destination’ the campaign also garnered 42M earned media impressions, and 51M paid social impressions. It saw a 103% lift in Sephora’s social engagement, 87% higher post shares, and 444k organic social views. And the campaign had a 1 in 4 self reported conversion rate.

Not only did the campaign have beauty lovers across the country talking, it also earned an organic endorsement from pop superstar Rihanna, who liked, commented, and shared the image of one of their guerilla placements.

By sharing beauty lovers’ not-so-subtle hints on what they wanted for the holidays on a mass scale, they put Sephora at the top of the beauty conversation, further solidifying it as the ultimate place to go for the perfect holiday gift.

Credits

Agency (Courage Inc)
Founder + CCO: Dhaval Bhatt
Founder + CCO: Joel Holtby
Partner + President: Niki Sahni
Partner + CSO: Tom Kenny
Partner + EP: Clair Galea
Partner + ECD (MTL): Marilou Aubin
Partner + ECD (MTL): Maxime Sauté
Partner & Head of Strategy (MTL): Rafik Belmesk
Senior Strategist: Sydney Hill
Creative Director, Writer: Domenique Raso
Art Director: Sammy Lo
Copywriter: Emma Lorenzi
Group Account Director: Kat Ledgett
Account Director: Sacha Komorowski
Account Coordinator: Ellie Horning
Talent + Traffic Manager: Christine Baggs
Director, PR: Natalia Banoub
Production Coordinator: Parker Wales
Producer: Veronica Coles
Sr. Producer: Sara Teasdale
Sr. Integrated Producer: Raquel Mullen
Sr. Production Designer/Retoucher: Jeannette Downes
Sr. Retoucher: Simon Tuckett


Client (SEPHORA Canada)
Allison Litzinger - SVP, Marketing
Zoe Berkley - Sr. Director, Integrated Marketing
Michelle Veilleux - Director, External Communications & Partnerships
Kaleigh Henderson - Director, Social Media and Influencer Marketing
Aster Tewolde - Manager, Social Media and Influencer Marketing
Caitlin Lindsay - Director, Integrated Marketing
Lisa Mok - Director, Creative


Production (United Assembly)
Photographer: Chloe Lukas
Executive Producer: Lindsey Rebeiro
1st Assistants: Blake Keen & Alex Young
Lighting + Grip: Neighbourhood Studios

Print Production (Italic Inc)
Owner: Dan Thompson
Account Director: Tracy Casteels
Production Operator: Nathan WItt
Installer: Amit Rushetzky

Digital Production (Media Trucks Inc)
CEO + President: Baljit (Randy) Singh
Ontario Operations: Veronica Rodreguez

PR (Middle Child)
VP: Laura Linden
Associate Director: Jade Hunter
Sr. Account Manager: Chandler Nowak

Media (Zenith Media Canada)
Group Account Director: Steve White
Social Media Marketing Manager: Martine Ghazouli
Planning Manager: Rahmeen Fazal