When the new ad for Coca-cola is on TV, you know that Christmas is coming. The bears walking on an icy land and drinking the famous beverage have been really symbolic of the last decade of Christmas commercial for the Atlanta's firm, showing how important Christmas is for this company. Coca-cola has always been a pioneer in marketing and advertisement, and the end of the year has always been special for the company. The Christmas celebration as it is painted in media is a product of Coca-cola marketing company, and it is in my opinion the biggest and most successful marketing campaign of the history.
What was Christmas before Coca-cola? We will talk about the commercial aspect with Santa and the present and we will avoid the religious signification of the holiday in this article. So before the worldwide propagation of Christmas as we know it, Santa was not the Santa we know. He used to be called Saint Nicholas in the Germanic influenced part of Europe. The idea is that Saint Nicholas was a bishop that was supposed to come on December 6th to bring presents to children who have been nice during the year. This tradition has been adapted in all Europe, incorporated with variations in the folklore of many countries. But this character was depicted as pretty serious and sometimes very strict, the opposite of what Santa Claus represents. So how did the transformation happened?
The idea of Santa comes from the merge of all the images of Saint Nicholas in the diverse cultures, helped by the publication in the 19th century of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The canon of Santa as we know him was established by a poem called "A Visit from St.Nicholas", that started to describe him being joyful, chubby and plum, and introducing his reindeer. So the folklore and popular culture have made the Santa we know today, and it has been a long process since the origin. So what did Coca-cola do?
Coca-cola merchandised Santa, creating at the same time one of the most successful merchandising campaigns ever created. First of all they shaped Santa, they gave him a face. In 1931, the Santa created by Coca-cola and painted by Haddon Sundblom was beginning his advertisement career in The Saturday Evening Post and has been advertised ever since. Coca-cola was looking for a new approach for their product, to make it family friendly and Christmas was the best opportunity, and Santa the best ambassador. The brand was really lucky that the colors of the character matched the colors of the brand, and that is why we often attach Santa to Coca-cola. The pop culture spread a different version of the history that benefit the brand... nowadays wen something went all over the world and spread like that, we say it went viral... yes that's the strength of the Christmas campaign by Coca-cola: they went viral before internet, they advertised with Santa so much for the past 82 years that now, a character coming from the folklore of many cultures has been totally changed and processed to be a commercial spokesperson.
Coca-cola just invited themselves in Christmas by changing the ambassador of the holiday to a brand ambassador, and Santa is now more known for Coca-cola than for a folklore of many centuries. And by doing so, Coca-cola stays on top of the biggest commercial event of the year. And by always improving and modernizing the image of Santa, the cola from Atlanta stays on top of Christmas as a matter of marketing. So if we summarize, it is not by creating Santa that Coca-cola revolutionized Christmas, but by using the image for a commercial use. They made the character more popular, detached him from his religious origins and made him international, relevant everywhere, global. It worked so well and he has been around for so long that now popular culture took him and is now part and parcel of Christmas. Take it EZ, and Merry Christmas.
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