After taking a more shopper-centric approach to its fall campaign, Giant Tiger continues to focus on the personalities of its customers, but this time in the setting of holiday festivities in the home.

The discount retailer’s “See Yourself Saving” fall campaign brought viewers into the Giant Tiger store, highlighting the various shopper archetypes found there, from the deal-seeking “investigators” to the multitasking “mom on a mission.”

For the holidays, the company has taken a more humorous approach to that messaging with “Perfect for the Holidays,” showcasing a cast of well-known characters found at end-of-year parties: the not-so-subtle “Hint Dropper,” the eager “Hostess with the Mostess,” the “Not So Secret Santa” who makes a point of making her identity known. Each one is portrayed in novelty clothing and shown enjoying products available at Giant Tiger locations.

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With “See Yourself Saving,” Giant Tiger was aiming to increase awareness of the brand as it continues on an expansion plan across Canada, as well as increase store frequency and let customers know they could shop in-store and digitally. While the privately held company chooses not to disclose specific metrics, SVP of strategy and marketing Cindy-Lynn Steele says the first commercial has helped with “moving the needle positively for awareness, perception and overall brand myth busting,” so it decided to stay the course on the approach.

Allen Oke, ECD at Giant Tiger’s AOR Huge, says the fall and holiday campaigns came in such quick succession that there were few in-market insights to pull from when creating “Perfect for the Holidays,” other than the fact that the first commercial has generally be well received among company franchisees.

But it decided early on that it would take the concept “out of the store and put it into the home and have a holiday party theme, so we could get a more rich cast of characters,” Oke says. The holiday season has a strong history of comedic movies and characters, and using the home provided greater opportunity to explore “generally accepted and ubiquitous characters that we could have fun with that we couldn’t at other times of the year.”

The bilingual campaign is running on TV until Dec. 24, but Giant Tiger is leaning more heavily on digital social this time around. The use of quirky characters led to a lot of “great takes” that simply couldn’t make it into the commercial, Oke says, so it decided to utilize them by creating social content, including 10 to 15 gifs and a handful of cover stories for Instagram, to help maximize the assets. Overall, he says, the agency wanted to leverage the shareability of the content, finding “earned ways of engaging [Giant Tiger’s] audiences in the channels where they already have a pretty good following.”