The Q5 mindset is different. Your creative needs to be too.
After the festive season, advertisers face a simple choice: keep the same campaign running or turn it off. It’s understandable. Assets are already live, teams are tired and no one wants to brief a whole new campaign for a short window.
On Pinterest, the week between Christmas and New Year’s—also known as Q5—is a high-engagement period, driven by increased searches and saves.1 But the mindset shifts: from gifting to self-purchase, from celebration to planning, and from browsing for others to acting on ideas for themselves.
Q5 is not only a budget decision. It’s a creative one.
If your campaigns are still built around gifting, countdowns and last-minute urgency, they can quickly feel out of sync with what people want now. The opportunity is still there. Your creative needs to meet it.
1. Switch from gifting to self-purchase
The Q5 shift: Gift for them → buy for yourself
After weeks of buying for friends, family and loved ones, people start turning their attention back to themselves and thinking about what they want and need next.
That shift looks different across categories. Beauty moves from festive finishing touches to “new year, new me” planning and fresh-start maintenance.2 Food and drink bridges one last celebration with healthier routines.3 Fashion leaves party dressing behind for January-ready style.4 Home moves from seasonal mood to comfort, function and everyday ease.5
That change should show up visually too. Move away from gift-led or occasion-led imagery and show the product in a more personal, everyday context.
Your creative cue: Show how the product fits the buyer’s own life, not someone else’s wishlist.
2. Move from festive celebration to anticipating the reset
The Q5 shift: Festive celebration → new year planning
Q5 isn’t the moment to pack away every last trace of Christmas. People are still celebrating, but they’re also starting to anticipate the reset of the new year. Your creative can reflect both. Hold onto some of the warmth of the season while starting to nod to what’s coming next: routine, refresh, organisation, comfort, self-expression or improvement.
TUI's Q5 campaign in Germany shows how this can work in practice. The brand used Pinterest during Q5 to promote early-booking offers, pairing Christmas cues with sunny travel imagery to connect the festive moment with planning for what comes next. The approach paid off: TUI reached 41% more people with Premiere Spotlight placements than its annual average,6 while video completion rate was 29% higher for Premiere Spotlight takeover placements than the annual average for individual placements.7
Your creative cue: Think evolution, not reinvention. A new headline, overlay, image, product selection or framing can reposition an existing asset for the moment.
3. Turn urgency into utility
The Q5 shift: Seasonal moment → next-step utility
Festive creative comes with a clock attached: order now, get it before Christmas, find the perfect last-minute gift. Once the big day has passed, those deadlines lose their relevance and urgency. But the shopping doesn’t stop—1 in 2 monthly Pinterest users continue shopping in the weeks following the festive season.8
What changes is the reason to act, and brands need to mirror that. Shoppers are asking a different set of questions: Why does this matter now? How does it fit into my plans? What can it help me do next?
That’s where utility comes in. Focus less on creating urgency and more on showing how your product fits the moment. Show it in use, as part of a new routine, helping people get organised, plan ahead, work towards a personal goal or simply make everyday life a little easier.
Your creative cue: Lead with the outcome or practical value your product offers—and why it belongs in someone’s next step.
Match your creative to the outcome — and make existing assets work harder
Not every advertiser needs the same Q5 plan. A useful place to start is the outcome you want to drive, then shape your creative around that goal. For example, if your goal is awareness, inspiration and fresh-start possibility may be most relevant. If your goal is consideration, it can help to show how your product fits the routines, choices or plans people are shaping next. And for sales goals, product-led creative can help people act on those plans simply and quickly.
Refreshing for Q5 doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. In many cases, it’s about finding a lighter way to adapt what is already live.
Refresh existing assets more easily. Media library can help advertisers organise and reuse assets in one place, making it easier to refresh creative without rebuilding from zero. Teams can launch more ads, test variations and reuse top-performing media across campaigns.
Build more creative variety. Smart assembly can help advertisers grow creative volume quickly and turn existing assets into ads, which can make a Q5 refresh more manageable for lean teams. Pinterest internal data suggests creative variety is associated with stronger outcomes: ad groups with 5-10 ads are correlated with a 2.7% increase in ROAS compared to the global average.9
Optimise for the outcome. Before increasing spend, sense-check whether your campaign setup matches the objective you want to drive. Campaign optimisation score can help identify opportunities to improve performance.
Don’t let Q5 go untapped
Shoppers don’t slow down after the festive season. They simply change direction. Refresh your creative to reflect where they’re headed next, and make Q5 a more relevant moment to drive action and carry momentum into the new year.
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