Booked your summer break yet? Everyone else has. And holiday companies know it. January is not just a month; it’s a battleground. One-fifth of the holiday category’s annual media spend gets dumped here. And with 36% of that on TV, it’s prime time for big campaigns.
The giants know the game. Jet2 keeps riding the meme wave with “Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday” and Jess Glynn’s vocals. TUI turned London Underground escalators into cheeky luggage conveyors to extend their elves on a break campaign.
This is compound creativity in action – big brands sticking, not twisting, and squeezing every drop from proven ideas.
TUI and Jet2 owned nearly 60% share of voice in January. They even dwarfed BA and EasyJet’s £2–3m monthly media spend. So, if you are a challenger, here’s the uncomfortable truth: you cannot outspend them. But we believe you can outthink them.
With all this activity in the market, it seemed like the perfect time to run our Brand Divergence Index (BDI) on the holiday category. Our proprietary brand health score shows how far a brand diverges from category norms and how that difference drives purchase intent and market value share. So, can it predict the winners and losers in this January showdown?
Looking at the data, three brands stood out:
Love Holidays:
Despite a £10m spend in 2025, they slid further into the Default brand quadrant. Our deep dive metrics show that Social Media Engagement tanked, leading to drops in both Difference and Attraction scores. This seems odd, with over 80% of their media spend poured into social. However, last year’s activity was mostly performance-driven, not brand-building. It seems 2026 will see a change, as they pivot with a new influencer agency and focus on top-of-funnel.
Smart move, and one we would have recommended ourselves. Long-term influencer partnerships and unexpected creator collabs can inject both distinctiveness and credibility.
Caroline Gill, our Social and Influencer Director, commented on the change:
“The Loveholidays swerve from purely performance metrics is a smart one, and their interactive billboard featuring Joe Marler at the height of his post-Traitors fame, is a great start to building that fame. In a competitive landscape with some huge spenders when it comes to media and share of voice, outspending is very rarely an option. So what you’re left with is flexing your creative – and your novelty – to find an idea so good (and a celebrity at the exact point everyone is talking about them) that people spread the message organically.
What will be interesting to watch is how this momentum is sustained (as people have short memories!) and I think the right mix of boosted social content would make the most of the activation and the partnership, and remind the audience of how the brand is changing.
It can sometimes be tempting to focus energy and budget on a big moment and forget about what comes after, or what happens around it, but thinking about how to squeeze as much as possible from a great idea (and thinking about how to do that when you’re developing the idea, not after!) means that it can be seen across multiple channels, live much longer – and ultimately reach more of your audience at the right frequency.”
Heidi.com:
This brand is a great example of outsmarting over outspending. With just 10% of We Love Holidays’ budget, Heidi shifted from our Default to Deviant quadrant. They doubled down on press, a channel the category ignores, and filled it with creative that breaks the category formula of price and smiling people. The result was a surge in Difference and audience Interest across 2025. This is what divergent thinking looks like.
To grow further, we would recommend that the brand focus on building Attraction, perhaps using media partnerships to build frequency and familiarity amongst key audience segments, and influencers for credible endorsement.
Hays Travel
Another brand making a smaller splash is Hays Travel. Their Difference score climbed sharply through 2025, and after a confident Christmas campaign, they are shaping up to be one of January’s quiet winners.
The setup feels conventional – Davina McCall fronting TV spots with solid proof points about the UK’s biggest independent travel agent. Safe enough, until that defiantly catchy jingle kicks in and proves the power of sonic branding. We cannot get it out of our heads, and it may be the reason 4% more people are talking about the brand.
Smart media buying pushed frequency through streaming platforms rather than traditional broadcasters. But the real brilliance is how Hays stretched a modest budget by supercharging the one thing online‑only rivals cannot copy – their 500+ stores. Shop windows bursting with compound creativity, turning every high street into free out‑of‑home advertising and extending the campaign’s reach long after the ad break ended. A sharp reminder that small brands can make big waves if they squeeze every drop of value from the assets they already have.
The takeaway
So, what have we learned from the holiday category to help any challenger stand out from the seasonal noise? Here are four ALTthink ninja moves:
- Outthink the obvious: Do not follow the herd. Find underused channels where you can punch above your weight. In holidays, cinema and outdoor both attract less than 5% of total category spend and have huge brand-building potential.
- Social is not just performance: Use it to build brand love. Think influencers, think advocacy, think Attraction.
- Break the wallpaper effect: Smash category creative conventions. We turned heads with our bold “’Ey Up World” campaign for Leeds Bradford Airport, using playful Yorkshire phrases to stand out. 85% of viewers loved it, and it delivered an extra 20% in media value.
- Stick over twist: Learn from the big players. Extend successful ideas at key moments instead of burning budget on shiny new campaigns.
- Make the most of what you’ve got: Your potential reach extends well beyond your media spend. Maximise every opportunity to see across the 4Ps.
Want to know where your brand sits on our Brand Divergence Index? Or hear more ALTthink strategies to help you outsmart over outspend? Let’s talk.