Bath & Body Works Makes Its Largest Media Buy Ever With Zooey Deschanel

Bath & Body Works has staked its largest media buy to date on Zooey Deschanel. The retailer named the actress and musician its Holiday Wonder Maker, the face of a campaign it calls its most ambitious holiday effort yet: Season of Wonder.

The buy runs across YouTube, connected TV, social media and stores, plus out-of-home placements in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. Deschanel stars in the campaign film and photography — pastel backdrops, holiday accessories, iridescent lighting — and will push the campaign to her followers on Instagram and TikTok. Yes, the holidays now begin before Thanksgiving. The brand has decided so.

What did Deschanel say?

The actress framed the partnership in familiar, sentimental terms.

"For me, holiday wonder is in the little things you look forward to every year: the scents, the lights and the feeling of finding a gift that is exactly right for someone," Deschanel said. "The holidays have always been so special to me, and Bath & Body Works is a brand many people associate with the season."

Veronique Gabai-Pinsky, chief brand and product officer at Bath & Body Works, kept to the same register: "With Season of Wonder, we're celebrating everything that makes this time of year special through fragrances that evoke memories, thoughtful gifts that create connections and new experiences that inspire discovery."

What's in the collection?

Snowflakes & Cashmere anchors the lineup. The returning scent pairs vanilla cashmere cream, caramel woods and frosted clementine, and this year appears as an eau de parfum for the first time, alongside body care, home fragrance, laundry and hand soaps.

The rest of the range:

• Vanilla Cocoa Flurries, the new scent, blending white cocoa, chilled coconut milk and vanilla woods.
• A holiday bubble bath with vitamin E and aloe, free of sulfates, parabens and phthalates.
• Returning home fragrances: Pure Wonder, Moonlit Goddess, Fresh Balsam, Lavender & Pine and Winter.
• A teddy bear motif across seasonal accessories and décor, all in iridescent packaging.

How much does Deschanel's edit cost?

Deschanel curated her own gift edit from the collection. Her picks: the Snowflakes & Cashmere 3-Wick Candle at $25, the Vanilla Cocoa Flurries Fine Fragrance Mist at $18 and the Pure Wonder Foaming Hand Soap at $9. The full edit starts cheaper than most lunch orders in Dallas, one of the campaign's three billboard cities.

Her reasoning is scent-led. "Fragrance has such a powerful connection to memory," she said. "One familiar scent can immediately bring you back to a holiday tradition or a moment with people you love. That is what makes Season of Wonder by Bath & Body Works so fun to explore and so personal to give."

Where can shoppers buy it?

The Season of Wonder collection is available now at Bath & Body Works stores and bathandbodyworks.com in the U.S. and Canada, with select products at Ulta Beauty and on Amazon.

A first eau de parfum for Snowflakes & Cashmere, a celebrity curator with her own gift edit and record media spend signal one thing: Bath & Body Works wants a bigger slice of the prestige-adjacent holiday gifting season, and it is paying retail rates to get it.