In a sea of heavily filtered, snow-dusted holiday campaigns, Friend Notebooks is once again refusing to play by the rules. For the launch of their 2025 Holiday Store, the iconic notebook brand has steered clear of festive frenzies in favour of a nostalgia-drenched Aussie mess-around they’ve aptly dubbed “Friend Summer”. 

But is this the right approach for a Holiday Campaign? 

Friend Summer

Brand head Alanah is the first to admit there’s every possibility this is the complete wrong vibe for something that’s supposed to be for the Christmas season. And yet, as with all of their iconic content this year, they’ve simply shrugged and done it anyway. 

“- to us? This is what the season actually feels like. It's celebration. It's good food and unfettered joy and wholesome moments that feel nostalgic before they're even over” 

She says. 

“And being Aussies, it's also sweltering days under the sprinkler, adventures on the road in a 4WD that keeps overheating, and boundless memories savoured with the people who mean the most to you.

“Those kinds of experiences are what we [Friend Notebooks] literally exist for: The joy of it.” 

Let’s move past the absurdity of the campaign being a combination of intense heat and water (see: two inherent no-no’s when all of your products are made from paper).  Friend Summer is a candid look at the actual studio team being, well, themselves. It’s denim jorts and ugly visors and blow-up paddle pools. It’s road trips, sunshine and smiles so bright you can practically hear them. 

The notebooks are scattered throughout, but the focus is deliberately off-center, demonstrating the feeling the notebooks cultivate as being more important than the product itself. 

“You all know what a notebook is, so we're not interested in staged photos of someone holding a pencil and looking like they're having a jolly Christmas. The real difference between something you pick up at Officeworks and the notebooks we produce, is that ours are hyperfocused on all of the ways people can embrace a little joy in their lives. And that’s what really needed to be captured for the holidays.” 

The campaign screams at the audience not to take themselves too seriously and serves as the entry point to a new, fully realised section of their online store. This is where Friend Summer gets practical; starting with a categorically unserious collection of gifting guides titled GIFT GOOD. 

Throughout November, the store will also see new drops in the Holiday Launch Collection, including limited-edition pens, accessory kits, and the coveted return of the Favourite Things holiday set in the Holiday Exclusives section. And crucially, all the best sellers that people can't stop asking for will be fully restocked.

“Everyone has been so patient with us as we’ve navigated intense demand for a few of our most loved notebooks this past year. We’re been working hard to ensure we have large enough print batches for things like our Weekly Dashboard prepped to bring these titles back for November - well, for as long as they last anyway…” 

The Controversy

The brand's commitment to the authentic, unfiltered approach is not just a marketing choice; it's become some kind of radical act that has polarized the internet. While this raw style has led to unprecedented connection, it has also sparked rough criticism from those who feel that marketing should be polished and professional.

Friend Notebooks' content—often featuring founder Alanah—is often battling comments like, "how could you possibly think this is a good ad?" or the blunt instruction to "hire someone to make your videos please." Perhaps most telling are the comments seeking to diminish the voice itself, such as ill-meaning advice like: "nobody will listen to a woman who talks with their hands this much."

Yet, for every critic, there is a devoted follower who is to put it mildly, obsessed with it. The backlash is overwhelmingly eclipsed by the community who see themselves reflected in the brand’s genuine chaos. Customers are reporting they've renamed their group chats after an iconic line from a video, calling the brand’s quips the new "Not Happy Jan" of the decade, or simply stating, "I don't even know what you're selling but I'm buying it immediately." The most powerful feedback remains: "they've never felt so seen."

This high-stakes, high-reward approach perfectly encapsulates the brand’s core mission: cultivating a profound connection with your true self. Alanah, who jokes that her presence in content is "absolute nonsense—please don't leave me unsupervised," explains the ethos:

"We work hard to cultivate a space for leaning into what actually brings you joy... Embracing your neurodiversity and building out a life that works WITH that instead of tries to mask it."

It's a lofty mission for a notebook company, but it’s one that has propelled Friend Notebooks to global recognition, making the brand synonymous with the authentic, unfiltered approach. Alanah welcomes the imitation, stating: "being your authentic self on the internet should be the status quo for brand marketing”.

So this brings us back to the question: Is this the right approach for a Holiday Campaign? 

To which we say ... why not? Go on, soak up Friend Summer with us.