Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the perfect event for our attention-addled age

In an age of high-turnover trends, ubiquitous screens, and fractured attention spans, a lengthy televised parade organized by a venerable department store sounds like a relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has in recent years proved itself to be startlingly popular and relevant. In 2024, the parade drew an estimated 31.7 million viewers on NBC’s broadcast and Peacock stream—an all-time record, and a bigger audience than the Oscars or any entertainment broadcast. This year’s parade will include, along with balloons featuring legacy characters like Snoopy and Minnie Mouse, a Pop Mart float with an oversized Labubu, a Stranger Things float featuring a Demogorgon, and performances by a singing trio from KPop Demon Hunters and Wicked: For Good star Cynthia Erivo.

Macy’s is stubbornly unforthcoming on the economics of its parade, and a spokesperson told Fast Company that it was “unable to discuss and disclose financials” of the event. But it certainly appears to be a bright spot for the retailer, which over the past decade has closed scores of locations and laid off thousands of workers. 

Various reports suggest the 2024 version cost an estimated $13 million to produce, with longtime partner NBC paying $20 million for broadcast rights. Macy’s and NBC announced a new 10-year deal earlier this year, and while terms were not disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported the new proposal was on the order of $60 million for annual rights to the Thanksgiving parade, a July 4 special, and a new event that’s to be determined. This reflects how valuable the parade, in particular, seems to have become for its ability to draw a mass audience, with NBC reportedly selling 30-second ad spots for $900,000.

A successful, unchanged formula

The parade dates back to 1924 and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1954. While Macy’s describes it as a “gift” to the nation, it’s one that has long since become a business in its own right. According to a report from 2019, a brand sponsoring a new balloon could expect to pay around $200,000 in construction and parade fees. But this, of course, yields a couple of minutes of on-air discussion of the brand or entertainment property’s balloon (or float or performance) from the broadcast hosts.

This is how the parade has worked for decades—and maybe that essentially unchanged formula helps explain its success. By now it’s an iconic event, deeply embedded in pop culture via numerous appearances in movies and TV shows, and countless memories. Even if you haven’t watched the parade in years, you know the gist.

So one theory of the event’s resilient popularity is that it is, like turkey and stuffing, an elevated variation on comfort food. A decade-plus ago, as many mainstream broadcast events began to see their audiences shrink, the parade held steady, in effect growing its influence simply by standing still.

But in the last few years, that audience hasn’t just stood still but actually begun to grow, topping earlier viewer records. The Macy’s spokesperson credits “the talented Macy’s Studio team” of artisans and other experts who craft the event, and certainly the proceedings are as lavish as ever. 

A more interesting theory, though, is that a broadcast parade is ideal for a fractional-attention world. There’s something new every few minutes and none of it requires deep concentration. This year’s event includes 34 balloons, 28 floats, 28 performers, 11 marching bands, and 33 clown crews, meaning the parade is nonstop novelty. It is essentially an analog, marching scroll. 

In a kind of virtuous circle, the audience attracts pop culture brands, which attracts a bigger audience. A Macy’s executive involved in producing the parade told the Freakonomics podcast last year that the goal is to balance “legacy characters” against “new characters,” in effect addressing an all-ages audience. Even better: All the content is basically escapist and certainly apolitical, providing an endless stream of excuses to change the subject to something benign when that cranky uncle starts looking for a squabble.

And while Macy’s may be opaque about the business details that help shape the specific contents of any given year’s parade, achieving that balance between contemporary relevance and timeless tradition is likely a key to attracting its audience. And sure, the whole thing is essentially an intertwined marketing event—a series of pop culture and brand promotions, under the auspices of Macy’s own brand. But nobody really seems to mind. Perhaps on the eve of Black Friday this is exactly what many are looking for. A Macy’s spokesperson calls the parade “the official kickoff to the holiday season.” That seems to be truer than ever.

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