College is not for everyone—even if the pressure to pursue a higher degree is nearly everywhere. Chevrolet explores this tension in a new holiday ad that continues the brand’s approach of using its annual seasonal spot to make emotional appeals around big ideas without making a heavy sales pitch.

The ad, one of the first efforts for the General Motors brand from Anomaly, features a boy confronted by questions from relatives about his college future at a holiday gathering. Put off by the pressure, he finds liberation while taking a ride with his dad in a 1987 Chevy pickup once owned by the boy’s grandfather while listening to a cassette tape Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.” 

“I want to be just like him,” the boy says of his grandad, a woodworker and homebuilder whom the ad implies never went to college. His relief is palpable as he gets the blessing of his father, who admits to have taken a different path than his dad.

The 5-minute, 30-second spot, called “The Sanctuary,”  will debut today on Chevy’s social channels. A 1-minute version will run on TV during Thanksgiving Day football games and again during NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” The media buy also includes cinemas.

It marks the fourth straight year Chevrolet has run an emotional holiday ad with plots that feature vintage Chevys and stories about families and communities. Last year’s ad depicted a woman struggling with early-stage Alzheimer’s who enjoyed moments of vibrancy after taking a ride with her granddaughter in a 1972 Chevy Suburban. That spot, from Interpublic’s Commonwealth/McCann, was a big success, with the extended digital version garnering 30 million views and 600,000 shares, according to the brand.

Chevy is sticking to the same formula under Anomaly, which won the creative account in June as part of larger GM agency review.

This year’s ad was directed by Tom Hooper, who worked on last year’s ad, as well as Chevy’s 2021 holiday spot, which told the story of a daughter who went on a covert mission to restore the 1966 Chevy Impala of her father.

Chevrolet Chief Marketing Officer Steve Majoros refers to the annual ads as the brand’s “holiday card to America,” noting in an interview this week that “holidays just naturally make you a little more introspective.” 

This year’s ad “centers around a young male, but it's a universal story” about the pressures young people feel today, including about going to college he said. “It all felt right for the times.”

The ad comes about three weeks after Donald Trump won the presidency by winning a majority of working class voters without a college degree, exhibiting what has been coined the “diploma divide.” He did especially well with white men.

Majoros said the election results did not influence the spot, noting it has been in the works since early last year. “It certainly wasn't ‘let's try to predict a demographic shift in the election and capitalize.’ I mean these are timeless stories, and I think that's the way we treat them.”

“We've been just thinking about situations in life and in culture that are meaningful,” he said, adding that the ad is “very Chevy,” focusing on generational stories about “building things, building families, neighborhoods, communities, and working with your hands, whether you're a male or a female.”

Also read: 33 ad execs predict Trump impact on ad industry

Country music

Majoros said the holiday spot is the fifth major project Anomaly has undertaken since winning the account. “There was no spring training here. I mean we hired them, and they started facing major league pitching here from day one, and I think they've been doing a great job,”  he said.The Stagwell-owned agency was behind an ad that ran during the Country Music Association Awards on ABC on Nov. 20 that celebrated Chevy’s long association with country music.

Chevrolet, which is the CMA Awards’ longest-running sponsor, had a big presence at the show. Dustin Lynch performed his 2003 song “Chevrolet” at a post-awards show in Nashville underneath a large sign of Chevy’s logo.

Anomaly was also involved with recent  Silverado and Equinox advertising, as well as more sales-oriented holiday work, Majoros said. He credited the agency for coming in and not wanting to “blow everything up.” 

“I’ve appreciated their approach, which has been, ‘let me provide a point of view on things, but we’re not here to just say, ‘everything you were doing before was wrong,’” he said. “They’ve added a little more personality to our work. I think they've added a perspective on strategy as well” including the brand’s “look, tone and feel.”

As for what is next, he confirmed Chevy would not be in the Super Bowl. The brand appeared in a 2023 Super Bowl ad along fellow GM brands, as part of a partnership with Netflix.

“2025 for us is about performance and selling and growth,” he added. “It’s about efficient, effective, optimized growth in continued, challenging business times.”

General Motors’ optimization has included job cuts. Earlier this month, Automotive News reported the automaker was terminating 1,000 jobs globally, or about 1% of its workforce, in a streamlining move that spans roles in marketing, engineering, design sales and other areas.