It’s Weepy season again, but the 2025 Weepy Awards aren’t just any Weepies. They’re the tenth anniversary of the Weepies — a decade of honoring the ads that make you sniffle.
In 2015 — our inaugural Weepies — we learned (well, y’all learned, ‘cause I’d already known) that unhappy stuffed animals make me cry, and “Opa faked his own death” became a thing.
In 2017, the Heathrow Bears made their appearance, but the RSPCA took home the gold.
The 2020 awards introduced us to Kevin the Carrot.
The 2022 Weepies established the Slam Dunk rule that thereinafter disqualified Chevy from the running (for as long as that lasted).
And now we’re here, ten years later, still crying over holiday ads and still celebrating the best of them. I will always stand up and clap for a clever ad, a funny ad, a snarky one, a strategically wise one, but something about the general sentimentality of the season calls out for a tearjerker. It’s like how being out in the cold makes you that much more appreciative of a warm fire and a hot cup of cocoa — the sentimental sniffles make the holiday joy that much joyful. And while some brands are good at drawing out the sniffles, some demonstrate a mastery of it worthy of public recognition.
Which brings us to our 2025 winners.
Honorable mentions
Weepiness is, of course, in the teary eye of the beholder, so these two entries might fall into the “maybe it’s just me?” category, but a weep is a weep.
Chewy, “Junior, the Forever Friend”
This one is just weepy because we’ve had to say goodbye to our own Skip and Dave in the past year, and with Christmas approaching, I was Simply Not Prepared. Hug your pets close, y’all. We get more time with them than we deserve, but it’s still never enough.
Etsy, “Gifts That Say I Get You – Little Drummer Boy” (Orchard)
It might be just me, or it might be me and a ton of other neurodivergent people like me who had a hard time connecting and being understood as a kid. But watching Alex take such shit from so many people, except for one person who actually sees him… Sometimes, “I get you” is the gift.
OKAY.
Having thusly kicked off the awards in a potentially buzzkill-y kind of way, let’s move on to the actual sentimentally weepy Weepy winners.
Bronze: John Lewis, “Where Love Lives” (Saatchi & Saatchi)
This one definitely hits with the sentimentality, and “kid who doesn’t know how to connect with their parent does so through the power of a thoughtful gift” is one of my favorite genres of weepy holiday ads. But it would probably have landed higher on the podium if there hadn’t been an air of… creepiness? to it. Something about the appearance and disappearance of the son amid strobing lights, and crossing the weathered expanse of the empty club floor, very much gives “father has been disconnected from real life whilst supernaturally trapped in memories of his more exciting youth, but son has found a way to break through the spell and bring him back to his family.”
I like where it ended up, JL, but I wish you hadn’t gotten there via “thank you, son, for breaking the sorcerer’s curse, because I might have been lost forever.”
Silver: Disney, “A Disney Holiday Short: Best Christmas Ever”
I’m well on the record about my sentimentality over things like stuffed animals and imaginary friends being given a really tough time (IGGY’S ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR YOU, EMILY, BUT WHATEVER, I GUESS), so it should be no surprise that Disney’s 2025 holiday offering would make it into the medals. (Putting the hard work in the hands of Taika Waititi was, of course, a no-brainer.) The li’l scribble guy who’s having such a great time and yet… not so much, his sad li’l scribble face as he gazed at himself in the mirror with the Stitch doll, and particularly the choice of the mustachioed Mr. Potato Head mouth are all artful touches bringing the certain happy/sniffly blend that’s reliable Weepy catnip.
Gold: Chevrolet, “Memory Lane” (Anomaly)
Okay, yeah, yes, but hear me out.
I know I’ve gone hard anti-Chevy where the Weepies are concerned, going so far as to basically exclude them from contention, because of their clear pandering to the judges. Yes, the ads have made me ugly-cry like an ugly little baby, but “first Christmas since Mom died and Dad’s having a hard time with it,” no matter how deftly executed, is the lowest-hanging of tearjerking fruit. That’s why (and yeah, I feel weird stepping in big for a brand I’ve kind of pooh-poohed in past seasons, but it is what it is) I have to push back on Ad Age’s assertion that Chevy “has kept much of its holiday ad formula.” “Emotional music and vintage vehicles” could be anyone’s holiday formula — Chevy’s formula has been that low-hanging fruit, the stuff that’s going to make you sniffle even if you don’t feel an emotional connection to it. This isn’t to dismiss, for instance, the artistry of Tom Hooper in 2021, but I think we can all agree he was swinging with a weighted bat.
But this year, Chevy went for it — not with Sad Dad, but with diaper blowouts and squabbling teens and Dad tying himself out of the car. We get Mom as the steward of memories like kids running around like maniacs and one kid cutting the car seat with an ice skate and Dad hugging them and not being mad about it, and seeing those things through her eyes — and her sniffles — that’s where the weepies come from. It’s not just sentiment but empathy, and good God does it go hard.
The big hit? “That guy’s not even cool enough for you anyway.” EFF MY LIFE. HERE, CHEVY, TAKE YOUR EFFING AWARD.
Thanks for ten Weepy years.
Thank you all for spending this soggy holiday time with me — particularly if you were there for the inaugural awards in 2015, but just joining me here to celebrate, and hanging out with me to hear me blather about advertising stuff, is the greatest gift I could hope for. Thanks for reading, thanks for following, thanks for engaging, thanks for filling the void I shout into on a weekly basis so it doesn’t sound as echoey. I hope you all have happy holidays with only the kind of tears you like to have, and enough happiness to fill your soul and come out your eyeballs. That, and a happy new year, too.