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How AldiIreland Turned Kevin the Carrot's Stag Do Into Christmas Gold
AldiIreland's 2025 Christmas advert, titled "Kevin the Carrot's stag do has gone pear-shaped!", is a multi-channel festive film in which the beloved carrot character finds himself stranded at the North Pole in a mankini while his fiancée Katie enjoys an oblivious spa weekend, sending his stag party on a frantic rescue mission to reunite the couple before the wedding.
Developed by McCann Manchester and released on 7 November 2025, the campaign marks the tenth consecutive year the agency has collaborated with Aldi on the Kevin the Carrot franchise, as reported by Creative Salon. The film is the second instalment in a three-part trilogy for 2025, continuing a narrative arc that began with Kevin and Katie's courtship in 2017 and now culminates in their wedding season. Media planning and buying was handled by Starcom, with confirmed placements across television and social channels, including ITV, Channel 4, and Sky Media takeovers, according to Creative Salon.
The campaign runs in Ireland as part of a broader UK and Ireland activation, targeting families and festive shoppers across a retail market where AldiIreland held approximately ten to twelve percent grocery market share in 2025, according to Kantar. The tone is deliberately slapstick and warm, blending high-stakes carrot capers with the kind of heartfelt seasonal storytelling that has made Kevin one of the most recognised characters in British and Irish Christmas advertising. Best man Kelvin's lament that things have gone thoroughly "pear-shaped" supplies the campaign's title and its comic engine, while mysterious detours to Lapland and a series of escalating misadventures sustain the narrative tension through to a teased happy ending. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting solid creative craft within a well-established franchise format.
AldiIreland operates in one of Europe's most competitive grocery environments. In Ireland, the grocery market grew six point five percent year on year in the twelve weeks to 26 January 2025, according to Kantar, and Irish grocery sales reached approximately one point four billion euro during the twelve weeks to 29 December 2024, a record festive period, also according to Kantar. Against this backdrop, the Christmas advertising window is not merely cultural theatre — it is a direct commercial lever for retailers competing for the same basket of festive spend.
AldiIreland's strategic position is distinctive. Rather than competing on price messaging alone, the brand has invested consistently in character-led emotional storytelling, a decision that separates it from competitors such as Lidl Ireland, which has pursued a more functional value-driven creative approach, and Dunnes Stores, whose Christmas communications have traditionally leaned on product and provenance. By anchoring a decade of festive advertising to a single character — Kevin the Carrot — AldiIreland has built cumulative brand equity that rivals with shorter creative histories cannot easily replicate in a single season.
The strategic rationale for the stag do narrative is rooted in cultural relevance. Stag and hen celebrations are a recognisable social institution in Ireland, and setting Kevin's misadventure in this context gives the film immediate relatability for adult audiences while preserving the slapstick appeal that retains younger viewers. Kyrsten Halley, Marketing Director at Aldi UK, stated that Kevin and Katie's journey has truly captured the hearts of the nation, and that from their first connection ten years ago to this walk down the aisle, the brand is excited to welcome viewers to celebrate this milestone, as quoted in Creative Salon on 27 November 2025. The multi-channel deployment across television and social channels, managed by Starcom, ensures the campaign reaches Irish audiences across both broadcast and digital touchpoints during the highest-stakes retail period of the year.
McCann Manchester directed the creative execution for the tenth consecutive year, working with production company Psyop to bring the animated and live-action hybrid world of Kevin the Carrot to life. The film was directed by Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick, whose background in character-driven animation gave the stag do narrative its precise comic rhythm. The North Pole opening — Kevin stranded in a mankini against an icy wilderness — establishes the film's absurdist register within its first seconds, a deliberate structural choice that signals to returning audiences that the 2025 instalment is pushing further into broad comedy than its predecessors.
The production deploys Lapland as a secondary location, extending the visual vocabulary of the campaign beyond the domestic festive settings that defined earlier Kevin films. This geographic escalation mirrors the narrative stakes: a missing groom, a countdown to a wedding, and a rescue mission that requires Kevin's stag party to retrace their steps across an increasingly improbable series of detours. The tone is calibrated carefully — slapstick without cruelty, chaotic without losing the emotional warmth that sustains audience investment in Kevin and Katie as a couple.
The two-part structure of the 2025 trilogy's central chapters allows the creative team to withhold the wedding resolution, sustaining audience anticipation across multiple airings and social shares. The Drum awarded the campaign Ad of the Day coverage, specifically highlighting the mankini opening and the "pear-shaped" storyline as standout creative moments. The campaign's engagement within the Clapboard archive reached 90,650 views and 276 likes, according to Clapboard, figures that reflect the breadth of the existing Kevin the Carrot fanbase rather than a cold-audience acquisition play. System1 scoring, as reported by Advanced Television, placed Part 2 of the 2025 trilogy at five point seven stars, against a reported average of four point five stars for Christmas creative more broadly, indicating strong audience emotional response to the film's execution.
No campaign-attributed sales lift, market-share change, or brand-tracking shift for "Kevin the Carrot's stag do has gone pear-shaped!" is publicly available from AldiIreland or Aldi UK at the time of writing. No awards entry has been recorded across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards for this specific film.
What the available data does reveal is meaningful. System1 scoring, as reported by Advanced Television, placed Part 2 of the 2025 Kevin trilogy at five point seven stars, with the three-part series averaging five point five stars overall — measurably above the four point five star average reported for Christmas advertising as a category. The Drum's Ad of the Day designation provided editorial amplification at a moment when Irish and UK consumers were beginning active festive consideration. Within the Clapboard archive, the campaign recorded 90,650 views and 276 likes, according to Clapboard, figures consistent with a franchise property drawing on an established and loyal audience rather than generating entirely new reach.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument rests on cumulative brand equity. A franchise now entering its tenth year, with a consistent creative team at McCann Manchester and a media partner in Starcom capable of executing ITV, Channel 4, and Sky Media takeovers, operates with compounding returns on audience familiarity. In Ireland, where AldiIreland held approximately ten to twelve percent grocery market share in 2025 according to Kantar, sustaining brand warmth during the highest-value retail window of the year carries direct commercial logic even where individual campaign metrics remain unpublished. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its established formula with confidence but does not yet demonstrate the creative disruption needed to push the franchise into new cultural territory.
AldiIreland's 2025 Christmas advert follows Kevin the Carrot stranded at the North Pole in a mankini while his stag party races to rescue him before his wedding to Katie. Created by McCann Manchester and released on 7 November 2025, the film blends slapstick humour with festive warmth across a multi-channel campaign in Ireland.
McCann Manchester created the campaign, marking its tenth consecutive year working with Aldi on the Kevin the Carrot series. Production was handled by Psyop, with directors Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick leading the film. Media planning and buying was managed by Starcom, according to Creative Salon.
Part 2 of the 2025 Kevin the Carrot trilogy scored five point seven stars on System1, as reported by Advanced Television. The full three-part series averaged five point five stars, above the four point five star average reported for Christmas advertising broadly, indicating strong emotional resonance with audiences in Ireland and the UK.
Kevin the Carrot first appeared in Aldi's Christmas advertising in 2016 with "The Amazing Christmas Carrot," according to The Drum. The 2025 campaign marks the character's tenth consecutive year, with McCann Manchester having led the creative across the entire run, making Kevin one of retail advertising's longest-running festive franchise characters.
AldiIreland deployed the campaign across television and social channels, with confirmed media activity including ITV, Channel 4, and Sky Media takeovers, as reported by Creative Salon. Media planning and buying was handled by Starcom. The campaign ran in Ireland as part of a broader UK and Ireland activation during the 2025 Christmas retail period.
AldiIreland held approximately ten to twelve percent grocery market share in 2025, ranking fifth among major Irish grocery retailers, according to Kantar. Irish grocery sales reached approximately one point four billion euro in the twelve weeks to 29 December 2024, per Kantar, making the Christmas window a critical commercial period for retailers across Ireland.
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