How brands are going viral this December *without* paid ads 🎄

Last-minute holiday marketing ideas to steal right now

Happy Monday!

This is the last inspiration drop of 2025.

Don’t worry, weekly emails continue every Thursday - and I’m really excited about the upcoming one. It’s a marketing idea I put tons of effort into. Don’t miss it :)

In today’s newsletter:

5 holiday marketing stunts I’ve been obsessing over. All from scrappy startups or founders. All with tiny budgets. All stuff you can steal in the next two weeks.

Let’s go 👇

#1

Tavus built an AI Santa that users can’t stop talking to

This one blew my mind.

Tavus (an AI video startup) launched an AI Santa experience where families video chat with Santa Claus.

The reason it went viral: Santa remembers you.

He knows your name. He remembers what you wanted last year. He asks follow-up questions about your favorite video games.

The founder said they’re blowing past last year’s “millions of hits”.

I think this is genius because Tavus sells AI video tech to enterprises. Boring B2B stuff. But they wrapped it in something families actually want to share with each other.

And that’s basically a perfect demo for their product 🧠

My take: If you have any AI product → build a quick holiday demo this week. A “Santa” chatbot. A “gift idea generator”. A “year in review” creator.

I don’t think it must be polished - it needs to be fun and shareable. Parents will show it to their kids. Friends will send it to each other. That’s distribution you can’t buy.

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I’ve got 4 more holiday marketing wins to share. Each one comes with a specific tactic you can launch before the year ends:

1. 🎁 How to turn other companies into your free marketing army

2. 🖼️ The $5K poster that got 20M views by being intentionally wrong

3. 🌍 How to get journalists to cover you during the slow holiday news cycle

4. 🪒 The ONLY way to use AI in your marketing without (!) getting roasted for it