As the hard seltzer brand committed to encouraging social connection, White Claw wanted to create a 2025 holiday activation that brought friends closer.
While most holiday campaigns talk about the same things: warmth, generosity, and picture-perfect togetherness, White Claw saw an opportunity to deliver something more authentic.
Because real friendship isn’t manufactured. It’s messy, unfiltered, and sometimes a little spicy. In fact, studies show friends who regularly roast each other are twice as loyal.
So we flipped the holiday script and helped close friends roast friends, with the White Claw Holiday Roast.
The White Claw Holiday Roast helped close friends roast each other.
We partnered with comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy to write and record hundreds of roast video clips, based on the top interests of our target audiences.
Then we built a roast-generating microsite to house them all, and mix, match, and edit the right ones together to make custom, personalized roasts for fans to send their friends.
Users could enter their friend’s name, and select their top interests. Then, within seconds, the microsite would generate them a completely custom and personalized roast video to send to their friend, full of fun burns from the comedians.
The microsite was able to generate 16.4 billion unique roasts, each tailored to the individual being roasted.
But that’s not all. The microsite also had a shopper portal where visitors could purchase items from our Roast Host Collection: a limited-edition set of tableware with jokes printed directly on them, so dinner hosts could serve up roasts.
The campaign turned roasting into a shared ritual, transforming playful callouts into connection, and reinforcing White Claw as a brand that doesn’t just talk about togetherness, but actively creates it.
The Holiday Roast resonated deeply, turning a familiar holiday trope on its head and inviting people to actively participate in the brand.
The campaign generated over 3.6 billion earned media impressions, and 100 earned media placements. Fans created 33,960 personalized roast videos, while owned and influencer social content drove over 2.5 million views. And year over year White Claw’s sales volume increased by 5.2% points.
White Claw showed up in a way that felt honest, social, and unmistakably human, reflecting how friends actually connect during the holidays. Proving that even in the most crowded, sentimental season of the year, a challenger brand can win by telling the truth and inviting people to laugh together.
