The Use of Santa Claus in Advertising Through The Years
He Sees You When You’re Shopping
By Steve Penhollow
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.
But do you recall? The most famous Christmas icon of all?
Why, it’s Punkinhead, the Sad Little Bear, of course!
OK, maybe not.
The point is this: Sometimes advertising changes our cultural legends, folktales and mythology, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it wants us to think it has.
The Coca-Cola company claims on its website to have essentially invented the modern-day Santa Claus when, in 1931, it commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to develop some advertising images for a campaign.
“In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931,” states a page on the Coca-Cola website, “Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf.”
The most sentimental conceptions of Santa always seem to survive attempts to coarsen him up.
Coke claims that earlier Coke and non-Coke ads featured “a strict-looking Claus, in the vein of Thomas Nast.”
Do a Google image search on Thomas Nast, who started drawing jolly, fat Santas in the mid-1800s, and you would be hard-pressed to find a single illustration that would qualify as strict-looking.
Most if not all of the Norman Rockwell illustrations of Santa that appear on this page were created in the 1920s.
“A world without Santa Claus,” a woman intones in this video produced by Coca-Cola that equates Sundblom with Santa. “It’s hard to imagine. No boots, red suit and white beard.”
Perhaps we don’t need to imagine that at all.
The independent experts I contacted said Coca-Cola’s influence on our modern conception of the “jolly old elf” was not nearly as striking as the company wants us to believe.
“I 100 percent agree that the myth of Coca-Cola creating the modern image of Santa Claus is just that, a myth,” writes George Mason University history professor Daniel Gifford in an email. “Throughout the early 1900s, images of Santa all feature the basic building blocks of the iconography. In some earlier images, the color of the robe might be something other than red, but red-and-white was definitely the most common. And Santa is absolutely fat and jolly long before Coca-Cola advertisements, so they can’t claim that either! I think the Coke ads were just so nationally ubiquitous that the myth sort of got built up.”
“The Coke contribution is not very big,” writes University of Manitoba history professor Gerry Bowler. “[It’s] just a series of popular ads by artist Haddon Sundblom from the 1930s to 1960s. The White Rock Beverage Company had been using Santa to push sales since 1916.”
In fact, a visit to the White Rock website divulges a page of very familiar Santa illustrations, none of them having been created any later than 1925 — six years before Sundblom began working for Coke.
According to White Rock’s website, the company had a 90 percent market share in the carbonated beverage industry in the 1930s.
“Any company with a 90 percent market share in the beverage industry was a company to admire and copy,” writes a White Rock representative. “What they were doing right must have been a question for the rest of the beverage industry. No one knows what Coca-Cola® was thinking at the time, but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, thanks, Coca-Cola®.”
Want to learn more about the Coca-Cola brand and its presence in today’s advertising? Check out our 2014 case study “Share a Coke: It’s All in a Name.”
It is interesting, and fairly unprecedented, that a brand as large as Coca-Cola would seem to be arguing for the right to claim as its very own a folk character with roots as deep Santa Claus.
The modern conception of Santa Claus is like a giant snowball that started out as a small snowball before being rolled down a mountain. It all began with St. Nicholas, a Turkish bishop who was known throughout his life for his generosity toward the needy, especially children. Aspects of his feast day celebration, which is on Dec. 6, eventually became associated with Christmas — small gifts in stockings, for example.
In Holland, he was and is known as “Sinter Klass,” and Dutch settlers brought that pronunciation and the traditions associated with it when they came to New Amsterdam, which would eventually be renamed New York.
Santa Claus’ reindeer were given to him in Clement Moore’s poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, and it was Nast who gave him his workshop at the North Pole. Moore appropriated the reindeer from Scandinavian and Finnish cold-weather coping practices.
Although Punkinhead remained a popular icon for the store for many years, he did not alter the mythology of Santa Claus.
According to Bowler, there was a single instance of an advertising campaign significantly altering the Santa myth, and Coca-Cola had nothing to do with it.
The year was 1939, and the company that commissioned the advertising was Montgomery Ward, the onetime Chicago-based department store retailer. Montgomery Ward asked an ad man named Robert L. May to create a coloring book for use as a holiday giveaway in the store.
The resulting book was titled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
The Johnny Marks–penned song that is still performed and remade today was based on May’s coloring book. May was Marks’ brother-in-law.
Lightning struck in that case, but it didn’t in another. Thanks to Bowler for the heads up on what follows.
Do a Google image search on the terms “Santa” and “cigarette ad,” and you will see dozens of images of Santa lighting up and blowing smoke out of his mouth.
Ten years after May wrote his book, T. Eaton Co. Limited (or Eaton’s) — the Canadian version of Montgomery Ward — commissioned a book as a giveaway to children during its holiday shopping period.
The resulting book’s main character? Punkinhead, the Sad Little Bear.
Although the character remained a popular icon for the store for many years, he did not alter the mythology of Santa Claus.
As you can see on this Pinterest page, Punkinhead was a brown bear that had orange hair. It is not known if the orange hair contributed to bear’s sadness — or if it was the result of an attempt by the bear to alleviate it.
Bowler said that additional Santa-related advertising fails can be found in his book, Santa Claus: A Biography.
An interesting question to consider is this: Why would Coca-Cola want to claim majority ownership of Santa Claus?
Coca-Cola’s mostly reverent advertisements featuring Santa Claus are certainly among the best of their kind. But they don’t accomplish what I think they are intended to accomplish. They don’t make us think of Santa in the same way we think of Mr. Clean or Mr. Peanut. We don’t automatically associate Santa with a product.
In the cases of some of the more unfortunate uses of Santa in advertisements, that’s definitely a good thing.
Do a Google image search on the terms “Santa” and “cigarette ad,” and you will see dozens of images of Santa lighting up and blowing smoke out of his mouth.
A meerschaum pipe might not seem incongruous. But a mass-produced cigarette? Nah.
Santa may survive all nasty portrayals, but no one can stop a sentimental ad campaign from being associated in customers’ minds with an irreverent one.
Online lists featuring Christmas advertising fails show drunk Santas, Santas who appear to be looking up women’s skirts, Santas modeled after the Star Wars villain Jabba the Hutt, Santas coming down the chimney to find ostensibly naked women with a unnatural interest in boot polish, Sundblom’s unsuccessful attempt to give Santa a sidekick named Sprite Boy, and Santas trying to commit suicide.
The most sentimental conceptions of Santa always seem to survive attempts to coarsen him up.
Given that Santa tends to retain his best qualities even in the wake of bad advertisements, it is obvious why he is such a popular advertising icon.
Yet, as Columbia College of Art & Design advertising instructor Andrew Haven points out, a company that uses Santa in an ad campaign can’t control the way another company uses Santa.
“For me, the interesting thing about Santa is that since he is a character in the public domain, he’s open for any kind of use and abuse in advertising,” Haven writes in an email. “That’s one of the strengths of coming up with your own branded, trademarked character (Tony the Tiger, Geico Gecko, etc.) — you run almost no risk of someone else doing something distasteful with the image. You can have your nice, sweet image of a dewy-eyed 4-year-old on St. Nick’s lap, asking for something lovely and touching … and then, 30 seconds later, there’s Santa selling Cuervo Gold to strippers. The brand value of a long-time, highly appropriated holiday character is, at best, questionable I think.”
Santa may survive all nasty portrayals, but no one can stop a sentimental ad campaign from being associated in customers’ minds with an irreverent one.
Perhaps the best recent use of Santa in an advertisement happened in late 2013. The Canadian airline West Jet surprised passengers on two of its flights by having presents ready upon landing — presents that people had asked Santa for before takeoff.
This year’s video, which also features the airline’s distinctive blue Santa, chronicles West Jet’s efforts on behalf of indigent people in the Dominican Republic.
On the other side of the reverence spectrum is the new advertisement for a bathroom deodorizer called Poo-Pourri.
The sound effects and salty language should be enough to make other advertisers steer clear of Santa Claus for years to come.
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Steve Penhollow Freelance Writer/Editor BMDG
Photos: Archives.gov and publicdomainreview.org
Originally published at www.brittonmdg.com.
