This post was created in partnership with iSpot

For iconic brands, holiday campaigns can be a key time to shift from product-focused messaging to more creative, emotional storytelling. But finding the right balance can be challenging.

During a Brandweek 2026 fireside chat co-hosted by iSpot, Ryanne Webber, head of brand communications at Mercedes-Benz USA, sat down with Wes Howard, senior account executive of brand partnerships at iSpot, to discuss how the luxury automaker is using year-over-year data to determine the perfect amount of holiday cheer.

The conversation began with Howard posing a key question that many brand marketers likely ponder during holiday campaign planning: “How do you make sure that you’re getting that emotional message across without jeopardizing some other elements that you have throughout the rest of the year?”

For Webber, it’s about working within the brand pillars, but leaving room for creativity.

“Craftsmanship, luxury, innovation, performance—that will always be true to our brand,” she said. “Success is protecting that from a long-term strategy standpoint, but also doing something new and innovative.”

She went on to explain that the holiday season is ideal for working in some emotional storytelling.

“It’s an exciting time for us because it opens up different opportunities we normally don’t have during the year,” said Webber. Last year’s commercials, for example, brought holiday characters including Santa into the mix.

Webber shared that Mercedes-Benz partners with iSpot to do creative testing and spends time looking at prior years’ performance data when planning for the next holiday season. For instance, when a popular campaign that ran last December was extended into January, a traditionally slow month, Mercedes-Benz was pleasantly surprised by the results.

“It was incredible to see that in January we had an Ace score that was almost consistent with what we were seeing in December,” said Webber. (ISpot’s Ace scores are used to evaluate ads based on factors including relevance, likeability, information, change, attention, and desire.)

Those learnings and insights on timing are helping inform the brand’s campaign planning for the upcoming holiday season.

“You can pick the data apart in so many different ways, but we’ve found where we can be a little bit more risky, where we can change and refine some things, but always remaining true to what we know performs well for our brand,” Webber explained.

By listening to the data and leaving room for experimentation, Webber is learning that there is a time and place for different types of campaigns, including those fueled by holiday cheer.

“I think the biggest lesson is you can’t solve for every brand opportunity and every business objective in one campaign. If you’re doing that, then you’re losing part of the storytelling.”