5d • Water Cooler
You're welcome, Santa.
We've all heard the basic story, that Coca Cola "invented" Santa... except that's not true, is it?
The iconic 1931 Santa campaign was dreamed up by the D'Arcy Advertising Agency, with executive Archie Lee commissioning illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create the warm, human Santa that became the standard image we know and love today.
However, the legend of St. Nicholas goes back to the 1300's, in England, Father Christmas was making the rounds and it was the immigrant Dutch in New York who really got the ball rolling in the U.S. in the early 1800's. Add Clement Moore's "Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem — a big hit in the 1820's —and Christmas (and Santa) was off and running.
BUT even that, doesn't really tell the true story. Santa had been linked to sell other products, books and was famously depicted by Thomas Nast in 1881, Wizard of Oz writer L. Frank Baum in 1902 and Norman Rockwell had been using him on Saturday Evening Post covers throughout the 1920's.
So what gives with COKE?
Santa was already pervasive in the minds of consumers, but crystalizing his image and giving more form to a tale already written at a time when people were looking for something positive, COMBINED with a product that used repetition as the key to brand awareness — is it any wonder that, to borrow a phrase, that "Santa went VIRAL."
Coke, too. Who wanted a refreshingly COLD drink in wintertime? In 1930, sell tea.
What Archie Lee dreamt up, with Haddon Sundblom's art, with the blessing of Coca Cola execs, was an ad campaign that did sold a lot of bottles of soda, even on snowy days — AND help brand the color red, goodwill and what would become the world's most consumer driven holiday indelibly to COKE.
Perhaps you, too, will craft your next campaign to last for 100 years! 😂
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P.S. Archie Lee, creative chief with D’Arcy St. Louis, did more than any other individual to popularize Coca-Cola. He's the guy who introduced the practices now basic in advertising: a theme for the printed message and a pattern for the billboard, with emphasis on REPETITION... and he wrote the copy line “the pause that refreshes.”
Not bad, Archie, not too shabby at all.
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You're welcome, Santa.
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