It’s here already!- that festive holiday season where advertisers get to compete like no other time of year for all of your attention they can get. With attention spans dropping and the world moving faster and faster, ad agencies need to be newer, faster and sexier to get you to buy.
And what could be sexier than Kris Kringle? Okay, that’s not where I’m headed and don’t worry, I have no intention of filing this under “erotica.” He’s not exactly new either, but he is fast being able to reach every house in one night with time to relax with a bottle of Coca-cola. At least that’s what we always see him with.
Coca-cola has been doing the best, time-honored Santa ads which date way back to the Great Depression. Of course, there’s nothing depressing about pure Christmas jollity year after year to cheer you up and, naturally, make you buy soda. Did you know the modern Santy Claus image was pretty much formed by these commercials? Yes, giant corporations really do shape our culture.
It started in 1931 with artist Haddon Sundblom commissioned to replace what had been a wide range of Santa imagery: some being not so fat, and others not even jolly, none of which were suited to advertise a soft drink or anything. To place ads in such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Sundblom looked to the poem “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas,” as inspiration to show a wholesome, friendly, fat man in red who could make people feel warm and happy.
Through the years the Coca-cola Santa appeared in many different settings but keeping that traditional style and image, always holding up a glass or bottle of Coke with a grin which says, “If you don’t want coal in that stocking, better leave a Coke with those cookies!”
The illustrations are always superb, and there’s nothing wrong with appreciating good commercial art (Brillo boxes anyone?). The original Sundblom Santa oil paintings are prized artworks today and regularly exhibit around the world in such places as the Louvre. There are also a number of memorabilia which are popular collectibles. Nowadays we see the Polar Bears which have been around since 1993, but the traditional Santa has never fully disappeared.
Forget Black Friday, forget the first of December, we know it is truly the Christmas season as soon as we see those Santas on Coke cans.
Coke-Lore: Coca-cola and Santa Claus
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