Once the shopping rush of the holiday season winds down, New Year’s celebrations mark the next natural thematic season for marketers. It’s a time for reflecting on the past year and preparing for the year ahead, which can get your target audience thinking about reinvention. Squeezed in among winter festivities, New Year’s campaigns are a major opportunity for brands to engage with consumers who are eager for transformation and focused on starting the next year successfully.
Why run a New Year marketing campaign?
The odds are high that at least some of your customers will be approaching January thinking about fresh starts and making resolutions. For example, 46% of Americans vowed to eat healthier and 42% to exercise more, per Statista. Similarly, participation in trends like alcohol-free Dry January has risen significantly, with 25% of Americans taking part in 2024 compared to 16% in 2023, while Veganuary, which entails a plant-based diet for the month, had 25.8 million participants in 2025. The 100-mile challenge, where participants commit to run or walk 100 miles total through the month of January, has chapters in 100 cities.
But the New Year narrative doesn’t have to be about overly ambitious goals. Recent years have seen a concerted effort in reframing language and storytelling about resolutions: Dove’s 2024 The Real State of Beauty study, for example, noted that one in two women’s New Year’s resolutions were based on dissatisfaction with their bodies, and launched a campaign called #NewYearsUnresolution. This shift in focus represents an opportunity for brands, especially in fitness and lifestyle spaces, to promote a more holistic attitude toward wellness.
Marketing campaigns promoting either resolution-focused discounts or relevant products can boost sales for both new customers and loyal customers alike. At the same time, a well-crafted New Year’s marketing campaign can position your brand as one that gently supports everything from personal growth to wellness journeys, depending on your niche, which can help shoppers begin to view your business as a partner in their journey.
9 inspiring New Year marketing campaigns
To inspire your own New Year’s marketing efforts, take a look through January campaigns from brands that offer promotions, New Year’s–related content, and a gentle (but no less persuasive) approach to the “new year, new you” mindset.
1. Ghia
Ghia made waves in the alcohol-alternative beverage industry with its bitter, botanical-forward, Mediterranean-inspired concoctions. Given the brand’s industry, tackling Dry January with its New Year marketing campaign was a natural fit.
For the month, they offered a series of zero-proof cocktail recipes and a printable Dry January calendar; participants could make a different non-alcoholic cocktail each day with Ghia’s aperitifs and spritzes, checking each one off on the calendar. The brand offered significant discounts alongside this content—25% off Ghia subscriptions, 10% off Amazon orders, and a referral program—to drive sales.
2. Bala
Bala is a movement and fitness equipment company that combines the mood of 1980s at-home workouts with contemporary designs and color palette. After becoming famous for its bangles (wrists and ankle weights), it now offers a full suite of at-home equipment.
As a fitness company, the brand taps into goal-setting for its New Year’s marketing campaign. Specifically, its “New Year, New Goals Mindset” email showcases equipment progression in terms of weight, and it gives a three-month road map to achieving fitness goals. This creates a clear incentive to start an ongoing relationship with the brand, progressing from beginner-friendly equipment to more advanced stages.
3. Jaxon Lane
Jaxon Lane set the standard for branding in contemporary men’s skin care when it launched the Bro Mask in 2018. It now has a full range of products and, in its January 2025 campaign, made a strong case for winter being a prime time to focus on skin care.
This New Year marketing campaign included active promotion of the brand’s sunscreen line (“SPF for winter? Groundbreaking”) and anti-aging hacks for winter in an email packed with tips for a full skin care routine, a quick “Skin care 101” overview, and product links. To boost engagement, the brand also participated in internet trends, sharing its Ins and Outs for 2025 in another email.
4. Mejuri
Mejuri makes fine jewelry fit for everyday wear in styles both bold and minimalist. The brand caters to a range of budgets with products in silver, gold vermeil, 14 karat gold, and lab-grown gemstones.
For January 2025, its email campaigns went against the resolution and self-improvement frenzy, with subject lines including: “New Year, No Plans,” “New Year, Still You,” and “New Year, Still Good.” The “Still Good” and “Still You” emails, in particular, introduced formerly limited-edition pieces as a new part of the permanent lineup, directing the customer to the bestseller category page, emphasizing the core line over buzzier, limited-edition drops.
5. Hill House Home
Hill House Home launched as a bed linen company, but it is now known mainly as a fashion brand following the launch of its best-known product, the Nap Dress, which resulted in the development of a whole apparel line. The Nap Dress was first pitched as an elevated item of loungewear, but once the apparel lineup became more robust, the brand incorporated resortwear, occasionwear, and everydaywear.
For an Instagram post in preparation for New Year’s Eve, the brand used a starter-pack-style social media post to create mood boards showing how different styles fit different scenarios. The campaign emails then promoted a sale event, which started with 20%-off markdowns and went up to 75%-off markdowns, which encouraged people to complete a purchase and allowed the brand to offload remaining inventory to make room for its upcoming pre-spring launches in the second half of January.
6. Flewd
Flewd is a wellness brand that specializes in magnesium bath soaks that also contain nootropics, vitamins, and microminerals. The brand’s products target symptoms of stress, anxiety, fatigue, and seasonal depression.
Flewd devoted its New Year and January campaigns to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), combining educational and transactional content with factoids, like: “Our bodies create a small amount of serotonin (known as the ‘happy hormone’) each day, but when stressed we burn through that quickly.” Each email showcased how Flewd’s products can help manage the symptoms. To further nudge recipients toward completing a purchase, emails about SAD offer a 20% discount and a 35% discount on bundles.
7. Flamingo Estate
Lifestyle and wellness brand Flamingo Estate is known for its photoshoots featuring Renaissance-inspired landscapes, portraits, lush gardens, and trend-setting home fragrance scents. In the brand’s book The Guide to Becoming Alive and annual New Year’s campaign, the brand celebrates the act of wintering as a period of introspection and comfort. Each year on January 1, Flamingo Estate launches its annual drop of a Petrichor candle and soaps as an invitation “to wash away what no longer serves you, and turn over a new leaf.” A limited-edition launch creates urgency and is a good way to entice shoppers to make a purchase right after the holiday season.
8. Stripes Beauty
With a skin care and wellness line designed to manage menopause symptoms and defy cultural taboos around aging, Stripes takes an honest, unfiltered approach to its subject matter and products. The brand aims to create an open dialogue that challenges and reframes topics that affect many people but aren’t widely discussed.
This extends to the brand’s New Year’s campaign, which does away with the ideas of “new year, new you” in favor of “same you, but better supported.” The brand’s January marketing is positioned from a place of acceptance, encouraging customers to meet their bodies where they are, rather than a frantic self-improvement quest.
Source: Stripes Beauty
9. AG1
Nutrition supplement company AG1 focused its January campaign on building healthy habits with an emphasis on gaining new subscribers. The brand offered a New Year special with $109 worth of free products, including a hat; a bottle of vitamin D3+K2; the standard welcome kit that contains a canister, a scoop, and a shaker; and five individual servings of AG1. The new customer would pay only for the AG1 pouch.
The language of AG1’s January emails is process-focused, with words like “rituals” and “consistency,” which encourage customers to stay on the plan for more than a month to fully benefit from the nutritional value of the products.
New Year’s marketing campaigns FAQ
What are some unique New Year’s marketing ideas?
Leaning into educational, season-specific content can foster both brand awareness and conversions. Depending on your niche, there may be seasonal trends you can capitalize on as well, such as Dry January and New Year’s resolutions.
What are some New Year’s marketing campaign ideas for small businesses?
When your business is small and constantly offering discounts isn’t sustainable, try to highlight specific use cases for your products that are tied to a new year. If you’re in the food and beverage space, get creative with recipe ideas that show the versatility of your offerings for easy, healthy meals, for example. If you’re in the fitness space, consider filming workout-equipment tutorials or short routines for social media. Another approach is to promote a restock of essentials as the calendar turns over to a new year.
What are some New Year promotion ideas?
You can extend your holiday sales period into the first week of January, offer a more generous “subscribe and save” option for subscriptions for the coming year, provide early access to new products, or host a “last chance” sale to offload overstock or product lines that will be discontinued in the new year.
