Rudolph the celebrity reindeer began appearing on Canadian Tire billboards last week in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, in a dozen key locales in each city. But rather than including a holiday greeting, the boards instead duplicate the retailer’s by-now-familiar indoor signage design, referencing the lighting department and implying – if only subliminally – that the four-legged fave’s flashing red snout may be purchased on aisle 10.

Toronto-based Sara Heller, Canadian Tire’s associate manager of strategy & advertising, tells MiC that the Rudolph billboards will be supported by three similar TV spots until early December, when a new image campaign focusing on holiday gift giving will succeed it. Toronto’s MBS did the media buys.