You can’t talk about festive distinctive brand assets without mentioning ‘Kevin the Carrot’.

Created by McCann Manchester, Aldi’s Kevin is celebrating his tenth anniversary this year with a Christmas trilogy. Global head of effectiveness and retail strategy at McCann Jamie Peate has been working on Kevin since his inception in 2016 and recalls the carrot’s initial success felt unprecedented.

“We thought we were onto something that was pretty good, but none of us expected him to capture everybody’s imagination in the way that he did. There was something about the showmanship of it – the innocence, the charm, the humour – and that was it. And it was such a hit and such a surprise, in all honesty,” says Peate.

Aldi marks 10 years of Kevin the Carrot with Love Actually inspired ad

The first advert, which saw Kevin travel across the Christmas dinner table, came at a time when Peate says Aldi was successful but had a “particular problem at Christmas”. The discounter saw its relative share of the market dip, “losing spend” among even among loyal customers.

The brand and agency concluded the discount grocer just “didn’t feel very Christmassy”, given its smaller capacity in-store. Aldi needed a campaign to “build Christmas fame”, with the “flex” to showcase the product range.

Peate claims the “benchmark” for Christmas advertising at the time was John Lewis and ads such as ‘Monty the Penguin’ and ‘Man on the Moon’. The team wanted to replicate the retailer’s success within the grocery sector.

And so, Kevin the Carrot was born, with an ethos to make the ordinary “a bit more extraordinary” with an advert referencing childhood nostalgia. The idea for a carrot specifically came from a 3p carrot toy Aldi sold.

“We just thought it was really funny to have this thing that was the cheapest thing you could think of, but it could become the hero of our whole campaign,” says Peate.

“We went and pitched this idea to the board and the CEO of Aldi, and I remember the CEO at the time said: ‘You’re telling me to bet my most important quarter of the year on a carrot?’”

Instant success

Aldi saw instant success with its first Kevin the Carrot advert in 2016. Peate says the concept was to “show off products” with a little character walking past them. The strategy worked, helping to generate a 15.1% sales uplift that December and attract 1 million new customers to the discounter.

By 2017, Kevin the Carrot toys were on shelves, with the campaign’s second iteration seeing Kevin meet Katie. Some toys were resold for £30 or more on Ebay, following “riots in store” as customers looked to get their hands on their own Kevin.

Peate was shocked when he realised one fan had a Kevin the Carrot tattoo and reports some other retailers using the brand asset unlicensed, which he sees as a sign the creative has “gone into popular culture”.

We just thought it was really funny to have this thing that was the cheapest thing you could think of, but it could become the hero of our whole campaign.

Jamie Peate, McCann

Now, each year the Kevin campaign is seen as “a Christmas present to the nation”.

“We have got to a position where Aldi is now certainly considered. When people are in their consideration list of where to shop at Christmas, Aldi’s up there, but we don’t take it for granted,” he explains.

From the start the idea was Kevin could be used in “lots of different ways” as a character. Peate describes the 2017 ad where Kevin met Katie as the “watershed moment” where the campaign really took off.

“It was really from then on that we started to create his world and understand what worked,” he says.

Since then, Kevin has been on great escapades, including meeting Santa, (almost) getting married and having his own take on ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Beating its rivals

Ten years on, Kevin’s success hasn’t faltered. On the back of 2024’s Kevin the Carrot campaign, the grocer notched up total sales of over £1.6bn in the four weeks to 24 December, a 3.4% increase on the year prior. In particular, sales of seasonal Christmas products rose 10% year-on-year, with sales of the premium Specially Selected range up 12% versus the same period in 2023.

Almost 3 million customers were served on Aldi’s busiest day 23 December 2024, compared to 2 million on the same day at Lidl.

Although Peate admits the primary measure of success is sales, the team’s goal was to make the world of Kevin “as famous as possible” and one people “readily associate with Aldi”.

Over time, this has led the brand to “push the storytelling” and include jokes both adults and children can get – a result of understanding more about how the idea worked each year.

Having high share of search was another key metric, with Kevin at one point being “more searchable than Father Christmas or Rudolph or Santa Claus”, Peate reports.

We have to be quite clever in terms of what we can do with the story, with the messaging, with the media, with the characters over the period of time.

Jamie Peate, McCann

McCann’s initial goal was to beat John Lewis and Coca-Cola for Christmas ad rankings, which Aldi has done. As Kevin has become more of a household name, the campaign has beaten Coca-Cola’s ‘Holidays are Coming’ in System1 rankings.

Since 2018, Coke has consistently had a 5-star System1 rating for effectiveness, scoring a top 5.9 every year since 2023. Aldi has had a slower journey, scoring a 3 between 2016 and 2018, but every advert since 2020 has scored 5 stars with System1.

The ‘Home Alone’ Kevin the Carrot campaign in 2022 was the first iteration to beat Coca-Cola on System1 rankings, scoring a 5.9 with Coke at 5.2. From 2022 to 2024, Aldi’s adverts have consistently scored 5.9 stars, with the overall ranking for this year’s three-parter only dipping slightly to 5.5 stars.

However, part one of Aldi’s 2025 Christmas trilogy, ‘The Proposal’, is System1’s highest ever 16-second ad at 5.8 stars.

The trilogy has also ranked highly so far on Ipsos’ Race to Christmas ranking. Last week part two, detailing Kevin the Carrot’s chaotic stag do, overtook Sainsbury’s second BFG campaign as the UK’s most recognised Christmas ad. Some 55% of people said they have seen the Aldi advert and recognise it after seeing de-branded stills.

Reflecting on what has made Kevin resonate so well with the nation, Peate puts it down to the fact the character is “always trying to do the right thing”.

“I’m a great believer that we’re ultimately in the light entertainment business. I’m here to try and entertain people and hopefully if I can entertain you in the right way and you’ll pay me some attention, and I can link it to the product, then I’ve done my job as much as I can do my job,” he explains.

Room to evolve

The concept of topping each ad year after year admittedly brings a level of “anxiety”. Each year, the team carefully consider how food is front and centre, as well as how to ensure the script is “cheeky” but not “stepping over the line”.

As the campaign evolves each year, so does the wider media landscape.

According to Peate, taking an episodic approach in 2025 was due to “the fragmentation of media” and a desire to keep the message going throughout the festive season via the three ads and other content such as a spin-off series with Gogglebox’s Scarlett Moffatt.

The characters are also intended to be reactive and used to further emphasise specific product adverts in the run-up to Christmas day, which Peate explains is particularly important for a grocer like Aldi without a loyalty scheme.

“We have to be quite clever in terms of what we can do with the story, with the messaging, with the media, with the characters over the period of time, and create lots of content that we can use in lots of different ways,” he adds.

We thought we were onto something that was pretty good, but none of us expected him to capture everybody’s imagination in the way that he did.

Jamie Peate, McCann

Peate believes Kevin’s success has “pushed other grocery retailers” into using them, such as M&S Food and Sainsbury’s.

“One of the things Kevin has pioneered is the use of returning characters and fluent devices,” he claims.

There is also Kevin’s use of “entertainment, showmanship” and comedy with a mix of drama, Peate adds.

Going ahead, he believes the character could even stretch to a 15-minute Christmas special on Netflix now Kevin’s world is established, as the team look to move the idea on “without moving it off”.

“As time’s gone on, we’ve probably got the ability for Kevin to tell his own story more and more. There are lots of storytelling genres that we’ve still not explored,” Peate adds, giving Kevin’s “origin story” or a “parallel dimension Kevin” as examples.

Although Kevin has been used elsewhere for one-off events, such as the Paris Olympics, Peate admits the character has been “kept special for Christmas” as something for viewers to look forward to. That said, he is excited to explore how Kevin’s story arc could expand in future.

For next year and beyond, Peate claims the team are “only limited by our imagination”, as Kevin and co still have lots of stories to tell.