In 1986, Martin Handford was just another face in the crowd. A trained illustrator, Handford had been drawing crowds of people since he was a boy. But everything changed when an art director at his employer, Walker Books, suggested Handford add a character with distinctive features to create a focal point in his crowd scenes. After much deliberation, he proposed a character named “Wally,” a bespeckled world and time traveler who always dresses in his signature red and white clothing. It would take Handford up to eight weeks to complete a single crowd illustration, which contained between 300 and 500 figures. The success of his seven classic Where’s Wally? books (Where’s Waldo in North America), challenging readers to locate Wally in a sea of people, was phenomenal. The “Where’s Wally?” trademark sold in 28 countries and made his creator a minor celebrity.

Etsy, the e-commerce company known for selling handmade crafts and vintage items, hired Wally this season for a special Christmas giving spot highlighting one of Etsy’s fortes: the personalized gift. The spot, created by Brooklyn-based Orchard Creative, offers a different take on giving the perfect gift. At a time of year when it’s easy to become jaded by all the glossy commercialism, Etsy’s spot breathes life into the traditionally two-dimensional Wally in a warm and very human execution.

The formation of the company was also a creative process. Founders Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik launched Etsy in 2005. On their name, Kalin explained that he wanted to start the brand from scratch, and needed a “nonsense-word” name that he could create meaning around. He had recently watched Fellini’s classic film 8^1/2,  and jotted down what he heard. In Italian, “etsy” means “oh yes.” In French and Latin, “etsy” means “what if.”

Despite its uniqueness, Etsy faced a long road to profitability. The company experienced a 43 percent sales jump between October and November 2007 as sales volume reached 300,00 items and consumer spending hit $4.3 million. However, by December, Etsy was still not turning a profit and required an additional $27 million cash infusion from investors. But at last they hit their stride during the height of the pandemic, selling among other things 24 million face masks in Q3 of 2020. By 2023, Etsy had sales of $13.2 billion and revenue of $2.75 billion. Etsy’s latest CX venture, which began in January of this year, is the use of AI to create Gift Mode—a user-generated gift guide based on recipient demographics and survey questions that include, “What’s their Zodiac sign?”

Etsy’s holiday commercial brings “Where’s Wally?” to life by showing him as a real person, attired in red and white, in various crowds of holiday shoppers. Some shoppers recognize Wally, just as the reader does in Handford’s books. They’re excited and proud to have picked him out of the crowd. But the creators have taken care to present Wally as more than a stock character—a likable young man whom the whole “Wally” thing is a job like any other. They know Wally on sight, but do they really know who he is, underneath his striped hat and crewneck sweater, behind his signature round glasses?

At the close of the spot, Wally gets out of the crowd and goes home, where his loving sister waits to give him a very special Christmas gift: a compass in a presentation box with Wally’s name on the lid. The compass back is also engraved—“I’m glad I found you.—Wenda.”  (Where’s Wally? trivia buffs already know he had a sister named Wenda.) In voiceover, Wally delivers one simple line that is the essence of Etsy’s message: “Sometimes it takes someone who really knows you to make you feel seen.”

Here’s why this spot resonates. Like Wally, we’re all lost in the crowd, straining for recognition. Why else would so many people be straining to be the next TikTok sensation? We all want to be influencers because every day on some fundamentally existential level, we fight the fear that what we do doesn’t really matter—random efforts that get lost in the miasma of our data-choked culture. In reality, each of us is just one of three billion Facebook users. Social media is not the warm, inclusive community it professes to be.

People who recognize Wally are akin to social media “likes”—a momentary, “skin deep” acknowledgment. It’s what passes for human interaction more and more these days. But when Wally gets treated as an individual at the end—and given a unique gift from Etsy, the social world suddenly seems less overwhelming. He feels appreciated for who he is, and not just for his public persona. Now, for the viewer, Wally isn’t just a person we want to identify. He’s someone we identify with.

This spot put me in a holiday mood. I think I’ll jump on Etsy’s website and do some last-minute shopping. (I hope I remember your Zodiac sign… ) Thanks, Etsy, for reminding us that to give a gift that really resonates, make it personal.

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