Written by Anthony Awadalla, President of Feel Right Inc.
Q4 is one of the most important periods of the year for consumer brands.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday shopping, product launches, year-end promotions, and planning for the following year all compete for attention at the same time.
And consumers are entering the season earlier than ever. The National Retail Federation reports that roughly two out of five holiday shoppers begin browsing and buying before November. In its latest winter holiday data, consumers planned to spend an average of $890 on gifts and other seasonal purchases.
For brands considering commercial video production, Q4 is an opportunity to do more than produce another advertisement. It is a chance to create something people remember, build stronger brand recognition, launch products with impact, and generate creative that can work across the entire season.
Holiday Commercials Should Create a Feeling
A strong holiday commercial can give a campaign more identity than simply promoting a discount. It can put people in the holiday mood, create an emotional connection, and make the brand feel like part of the season.
LEGO took this approach with its 2025 holiday campaign, “Is It Play You’re Looking For?” Rather than leading with a promotion, the brand created a story about a brother and sister reconnecting through play, using more than 97,000 LEGO bricks and hundreds of minifigures to build out the world of the commercial. The product was everywhere, but the story was ultimately about family and togetherness.
Coca-Cola has taken a similar approach for years. Its holiday campaigns focus heavily on the feeling surrounding the season and the brand’s association with it. In 2025, its global holiday campaign again centered on human connection and the people who create holiday magic rather than simply promoting the beverage itself.
That is the opportunity for consumer brands in Q4: don’t only sell the promotion. Create something people can associate with the season.
Think Beyond the Traditional Holiday Commercial
We believe some of the strongest creative comes from going against the grain.
The format can be a traditional commercial, a brand film, a short film, social content, or something increasingly interesting for brands: a micro-series.
Whatever the format, the customer should remain at the center of the story. What are they experiencing? What are they feeling? Where does the product naturally fit into their journey?
Maybelline provided a great example with its 2025 holiday campaign “Maybe This Christmas.”
Instead of producing a conventional beauty commercial, Maybelline and Maximum Effort created a five-part microdrama starring Lacey Chabert and Dustin Milligan. Each episode was roughly one minute long and followed an unfolding holiday romance and mystery, with Maybelline’s Instant Eraser Concealer naturally woven into the story.
The series ran across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and ReelShort, with additional paid media around major holiday programming. Maybelline’s president described the goal as creating something audiences would actually want to consume rather than another traditional advertisement.
That’s a fun way to think about Q4 creative.
Instead of one advertisement asking someone to buy during Black Friday, a brand could create a story that unfolds across the season—building toward Black Friday, Christmas shopping, gifting, and other major consumer moments.
It gives the audience a reason to come back.
Brand Films Help Keep Brands Top of Mind
Not every Q4 production needs to revolve around a sale.
A brand film can be valuable when the goal is awareness and keeping the company top of mind heading into the new year.
Instead of focusing exclusively on features, pricing, or promotions, a brand film can communicate what the company represents and how the customer should feel about it.
There is data behind that role as well. In Wyzowl’s 2026 video marketing survey, 93% of video marketers said video had helped increase brand awareness.
For consumer brands operating in crowded categories, recognition matters. If several products have similar features and price points, memorable creative can give consumers another reason to remember one brand over another.
A brand film can live well beyond Q4 across a company’s website, social channels, paid advertising, retail presentations, trade shows, PR, and future campaigns.
Product Launch Videos Create a Moment
Q4 is also an important period for product launches.
Simply announcing that a product is available is very different from creating a campaign around its arrival.
A strong product launch video can combine storytelling, product cinematography, demonstrations, lifestyle footage, motion graphics, photography, and social content to make the launch feel like an event.
Video is particularly powerful when customers are still learning about a product. Wyzowl’s 2026 research found that 63% of consumers would most like to learn about a product or service through a short video, while 85% said they had been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video.
The opportunity isn’t simply to show people what the product does.
It’s to make them care that it exists.
Get More From One Commercial Production
One commercial shoot can often generate far more than one finished video.
When the entire campaign is considered before production begins, the same production can capture a hero commercial alongside shorter edits, vertical content, product footage, photography, and paid social assets.
That matters because brands are distributing video in more places than ever. In Wyzowl’s 2026 survey, social media video was the most commonly produced type of marketing video, used by 69% of video marketers, while video ads were produced by 48%.
Instead of producing each piece independently, brands can design the production around the larger content ecosystem.
A Q4 shoot might generate:
- A hero commercial or brand film
- 30- and 15-second cutdowns
- Vertical social content
- Product beauty footage
- Paid social variations
- Lifestyle and product photography
- Promotional Black Friday or holiday versions
- Evergreen versions that continue running after Q4
The creative should still lead. The additional deliverables should be planned around it rather than watering down the primary idea.
Why Q4 Campaigns Need to Start Early
Holiday shopping no longer begins after Thanksgiving.
NRF’s holiday research has consistently found that a significant portion of consumers start shopping before November, while retailers increasingly launch holiday promotional events as early as October.
Black Friday itself also remains one of the largest shopping moments of the year. In NRF’s 2025 data, approximately 85.7 million consumers shopped online on Black Friday, while another 75.9 million shopped online on Cyber Monday.
Brands therefore need their campaigns ready before customers enter buying mode.
Commercial production can require creative development, scripting, storyboarding, casting, locations, production design, product preparation, filming, editing, VFX, sound design, color grading, and approvals.
The earlier those pieces begin, the more room there is to develop an idea rather than simply race toward a deadline.
What Should a Consumer Brand Produce for Q4?
There isn’t one answer.
The right approach depends on what the brand is trying to accomplish.
If the goal is immediate seasonal attention, that might be a holiday commercial.
If the goal is long-term awareness, it might be a brand film.
If a new product is entering the market, it could be a product launch campaign.
And if the goal is to create something audiences actively follow, formats such as Maybelline’s holiday micro-series show how brands can push beyond the traditional commercial entirely.
The format should serve the idea—not the other way around.
Q4 Is Also the Time to Plan Ahead
Q4 isn’t only about finishing the current year.
It is also when many brands begin setting budgets, planning launches, and building campaign calendars for the next one.
Identifying major product launches, seasonal campaigns, and brand initiatives early gives creative teams more time to develop stronger ideas and allows commercial productions to serve more than one marketing need.
A well-planned production can create a foundation for months of content rather than one moment in the media calendar.
Commercial Video Production With Feel Right Inc.
Feel Right Inc. is a commercial video production company based in Southern California, producing commercials, brand films, product launch campaigns, paid social content, product photography, and campaign assets for consumer brands.
We provide commercial video production in Los Angeles, Orange County, and beyond.
Our approach starts with the story and the customer journey. From there, we look for the most interesting way to tell it—whether that’s a commercial, cinematic brand film, product launch campaign, micro-series, or something that hasn’t been done the same way a hundred times before.
For consumer brands heading into Q4, commercial video production can do more than advertise a holiday promotion.
It can put audiences in the mood, make a new product feel important, keep a brand top of mind, and create something people actually want to watch.