Celebrity holiday ads usually work one of two ways: the star is a fantasy, or the star is a fish out of water. Sephora picks the second option and casts the most fish-out-of-water man it could find. “We All Sephora” sends Seth Rogen into a Sephora store with a gift list, no clue and a beauty advisor who has seen it all. It is a 54-second sketch with a simple brief, beauty gifting is for everyone, even this guy, and for most of its running time it delivers that brief with more charm than the category usually allows.
WHAT HAPPENS ON SCREEN
Rogen walks up to an advisor in the black-and-white-striped aisles and confesses the problem: “I need some amazing beauty gifts for my people and I have no idea what I’m doing.” She answers with the line the whole campaign is built on, “I got you,” and the rest of the film is her quietly steering him through the store while he does his best to sabotage himself.
He gets caught sniffing a tester and tries to talk his way out of it. He is sold a setting spray for his producer and immediately starts spraying it on his neck, which leads to a short, very Rogen negotiation about where exactly the neck ends and the face begins. He picks up a sheet of what he thinks are face stickers for his cousin and is gently told they are pimple patches, so the cousin gets a fragrance instead. For his mother, who needs something “really special, but different,” the advisor hands over an LED face mask, and the film cuts to the payoff: Rogen and his mom on a couch at home, both glowing red behind their masks. “We look pretty cool,” he says, and he is not wrong.
The pimple patches come back for one last gag on his way out of the store before the final shot, a holiday-decorated storefront where the sign reads “SETHPHORA,” and the line “This holiday, we all Sephora.”
CREDITS
Brand: Sephora (U.S. and Canada). Film: “We All Sephora,” 0:54, uploaded to Sephora’s official YouTube channel on October 26, 2026. Agency: GUT New York. Director: Jason Woliner. Cast: Seth Rogen. Sephora says the campaign rolls out officially on October 29 across CTV, linear TV, streaming and social, and it was teased with a “Sethphora” takeover of the brand’s store at The Grove in Los Angeles. Credits per Sephora, Adweek and LBB; further production credits were not published at the time of writing.
THE EXECUTION
Jason Woliner, who made his name on Human Giant and later directed the Borat sequel, is the right call for this. He shoots the store almost like a documentary, handheld, in real aisles under real retail light, and lets the jokes play in two-shots instead of cutting for every punchline. Rogen is doing his familiar act, the nervous laugh and the over-explaining, but it suits the premise. The film needs somebody who looks genuinely lost in a beauty store, and he sells that without mugging.
The smartest piece of casting is the advisor. She plays it completely straight, patient and a little amused, and that turns her into the real hero of the ad. Every joke is Rogen getting it wrong; every answer is a Sephora employee getting it right. That is the actual product message, the expertise on the shop floor, and it lands without a single line of voiceover explaining it.
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
What works: the insight is real. A lot of people walk into a beauty store in December with the exact panic Rogen opens with, and Sephora has decided to make that panic the joke rather than pretend it does not exist. The products are shown in use, not floating on a white background, and the film never talks down to the shopper it is courting. “Sethphora” is a cheap pun, but it is a good end card, and it ties the film neatly to the store takeover.
What doesn’t: the jokes are mild. Setting spray on the neck and pimple patches as stickers are the first two gags anyone would write for this premise, and the pimple patch bit is used twice. There is also no real surprise in the structure: man is confused, expert helps, everyone is happy. And the casting cuts both ways. Rogen makes the idea that “anyone” can shop at Sephora concrete, but the film is so invested in him being out of place that it quietly reinforces the idea that beauty gifting is something men are supposed to be bad at. The specific products also stay a blur, so if the goal is to drive people to “Seth’s curated picks,” the ad does not tell you what most of them are.
VERDICT
“We All Sephora” is a likable, well-cast holiday sketch that knows exactly who it is for: the nervous gifter who would rather not ask for help. Woliner keeps it loose, Rogen keeps it human and the advisor makes Sephora look like the place to go when you are out of your depth. The writing plays it safe and the gags are predictable, but the mother-and-son mask shot alone earns its slot in the holiday rotation. Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
