The history of Aldi dates back to 1913, when Anna Albrecht opened a small shop in Essen, Germany. After the Second World War, her sons Karl and Theo took over the business and began expanding it as a chain of stores. In 1961, the Albrecht family opened its first discount grocery store. This is also where the name Aldi comes from — Albrecht Discount. Following a dispute between the brothers over whether cigarettes should be sold in the store, the business was split into two companies: Theo Albrecht went on to run Aldi Nord, while Karl Albrecht took charge of Aldi Süd.
From the very beginning, the brand has been based on a simple but consistently upheld principle: high quality at permanently low prices. This model gradually proved extremely successful — the brand first expanded across Europe and, in 1976, entered the US market by opening its first store in Iowa. Today, ALDI is one of the most important retail players in the United States. It operates thousands of stores across most states and employs tens of thousands of people. The brand has also enjoyed major success in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom.
Aldi’s first advertising activities
With its first British advert, titled “Like Brands, Only Cheaper”, the brand set out to persuade conservative British consumers to give up their favourite brand of tea and, for once, try an unfamiliar — and cheaper — alternative. That was no easy task. The brand decided to rely on dry humour — and it proved to be the right choice. The 2011 advert, in which an elderly lady compares two teas and eventually declares that she actually prefers gin, marked a turning point for Aldi. It convinced a fairly reserved British nation that, despite their lower prices, Aldi products were just as good as the alternatives offered by major brands.
Video: Aldi – Like Brands, Only Cheaper (2011)
“We were trying to dispel this paradigm that in life you get what you pay for: that if something’s too good to be true, then it generally is,” explained Aldi UK marketing director Adam Zavalis. “We had to go out there and prove that myth wrong by demonstrating our Aldi exclusive brands were just as good, if not better, than the brands people know and love.”
The beginnings of Aldi’s Christmas campaigns
Aldi had produced Christmas adverts before, but its first truly visible Christmas campaign — one that also appeared in mainstream media — can probably be considered the campaign from 2015. The Christmas campaign titled “Aldi Favourite Things” offers a fairly traditional festive spot, while also serving as a gentle parody of John Lewis’s style — and of one particular John Lewis advert from that period. The soundtrack was “My Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music. The advert shows a series of favourite Christmas moments and things — food, family, sharing and small pleasures — and connects them with Aldi’s product range. At the same time, it gently mocks the exaggerated sentimentality of some competitors: instead of a grand cinematic story, it focuses on everyday joys and value for money.
Video: Aldi – My Favourite Things
The carrot that took the world by storm
In 2016, a star was born: Kevin the Carrot. At the time, Aldi and McCann Manchester were trying to break through in an overcrowded Christmas advertising landscape. The campaign, inspired by the poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, was split into two parts — already then, Aldi saw the campaign not as a single isolated spot, but as a narrative spread over time. The first part introduced Kevin as a new Christmas character:
Video: Aldi – 2016 Christmas campaign – introducing Kevin the Carrot
The second spot then developed Kevin’s Christmas story:
Video: Aldi – 2016 Christmas campaign, Part 2
Kevin made history. He quickly won the affection of both audiences and industry experts and became a permanent feature of Aldi’s Christmas marketing. The brand made the strategic decision to focus on continuity and consistency: while competitors came up with a new concept every year, Aldi built a long-term story around a single character. And so Kevin also appeared in the 2017 advert.
Video: Aldi – 2017 Christmas campaign
Kevin helped keep the brand in customers’ minds during a difficult period, when the world was facing the COVID pandemic, and discounters were gradually losing market share to the major supermarkets. Kevin was simply a bullseye.
Video: Aldi – 2018 Christmas campaign
According to System1, the Kevin campaigns in 2016, 2017 and 2018 performed well, but not exceptionally. They received a very stable three-star rating, which was good, though not outstanding. But throughout that period, viewers’ awareness of Kevin kept growing. And in 2019, this paid off in a big way. Kevin received a high System1 rating thanks to the circus-themed advert featuring Robbie Williams’s song. It was one of the best British adverts of the year:
Video: Aldi – 2019 Christmas campaign
By his fifth year, Kevin had already built a strong memory structure. In System1’s rating, he received five stars and became part of a Christmas tradition in the UK. Aldi’s 2020 Christmas advert featuring Kevin also won the title of Britain’s Favourite Ad of 2020, replacing the previous winner, John Lewis, in the ranking. The success confirmed that long-term creative consistency and work with a well-known character can be key to success. In the spot, shortly before Christmas, Kevin accidentally finds himself far from home. While his family and friends prepare to spend the holidays together, Kevin is left alone and desperately tries to get back home in time.
Video: Aldi – vánoční kampaň z roku 2020
In addition to the long version, Aldi also released shorter spots. In them, Kevin finds himself in extreme situations, including a flight in a fighter jet from which he is eventually ejected. Aldi’s typical absurd humour is clearly visible here — Kevin is “thrown out” of the jet by a turkey. It is, in a way, Top Gun Kevin-style:
Video: Aldi – 2020 Christmas campaign – Peel the Need
Although the plot is exaggerated and at times comic, the emotions remain clear: fear, loneliness, determination and hope. The climax of the advert emphasises the spot’s main theme: Christmas is not about perfection or things, but about being together.
The 2021 Christmas campaign brought an interesting twist. The teaser initially featured no Kevin. It was released before the main spot and deliberately did not include Kevin the Carrot. Instead, it introduced a new character, Ebanana Scrooge. This was a parody of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The aim of this strategy was to arouse curiosity, disrupt audience expectations — “where is Kevin?” — and create a moment of surprise when Kevin later appeared in the main advert. This approach was widely discussed in the UK because Aldi had, for the first time, “sidelined” its iconic character. But only temporarily — as part of a carefully thought-out Christmas dramaturgy.
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2021
The big breakthrough came in 2022. Aldi’s Christmas spot featuring Kevin the Carrot and inspired by Home Alone was rated one of the best adverts of the year.
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2022
Aldi’s 2023 Christmas advert drew inspiration from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It worked with the aesthetics of a magical factory, fantasy and childlike wonder. Both the visual style and the storytelling refer to a journey into a magical world where ordinary things become extraordinary. In doing so, Aldi continued its earlier strategy of using cultural and cinematic stories that viewers immediately recognise and placing Kevin the Carrot within them.
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2023
Each subsequent spot has developed Kevin’s adventures with gentle humour, suspense and subtle pop-culture references. In 2024 came a “Mission Impossible”. The advert opens on Christmas Eve in a snow-covered village. The peace is disrupted by a black-and-white van. A group of thieves steals the “spirit of Christmas”. Fortunately, Santa Claus knows exactly who to turn to. He wakes Kevin the Carrot and entrusts him with an “impossible” task — breaking into the fraudsters’ headquarters and recovering the “spirit of Christmas”.
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2024
This year’s Aldi Christmas campaign marks something of an anniversary for the brand. Aldi is celebrating ten years since entering the “big league” of British Christmas advertising, while it is also Kevin the Carrot’s tenth Christmas season. The biggest difference in this year’s campaign is its format: for the first time, Aldi introduced its Christmas campaign as a multi-part story, or mini-series. The individual episodes were spread out over Advent. Each had its own dramatic arc, but together they formed a complete romantic story. In the first part, titled “What’s on the cards for Kevin the Carrot this Christmas?”, Kevin proposed to his love Katie with the help of cards in the style of the famous Christmas film Love Actually:
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2025
The second part shows Kevin and Katie’s stag and hen celebrations. The third and final episode, featuring the wedding ceremony, brings the story to a close:
Video: Aldi Christmas campaign 2025
Kevin the Carrot rulez!
Who knows what we can expect next year. Aldi’s strategy built around Kevin the Carrot is one of the most consistent and successful Christmas brand-building approaches in British retail. The key to its success is Kevin’s childlike, naïve view of the world, which remains firmly rooted in the Christmas universe. The creators make sure the character does not drift too far from his core personality, while at the same time placing him in new and surprising situations each year. It is precisely this combination of consistency, emotion and gentle self-irony that has made Kevin one of the most successful and longest-running Christmas advertising icons of our time. Kevin the Carrot has become a character viewers still look forward to every year — much like traditional Christmas television specials. Aldi’s Christmas campaigns prove that long-term consistency can be more powerful in advertising than an annual creative reset.