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The Coca-Cola Branding Christmas Story

It’s Christmas time and jolly old Santa Claus is gearing up for his annual appearance, he suits up, straps in his reindeers and grabs his bottle of…Coca-Cola. Yup, Santa is the way we know him to be because of Coca-Cola’s branding strategy. Here’s the story: 👇 👇

Santa & Coca Cola:

• Santa (St. Nick) was always an important figure during Christmas, but he was portrayed differently across different cultures or authors.

• In 1931, Coca-Cola decided to adopt Santa as part of its festive holiday campaign.

• They hired an illustrator to paint Santa with a big white beard, rosy-cheeks, and big belly, drinking Coke.

• It’s no coincidence that both Santa and Coca-Cola are dressed in red and white.

• Santa was given his jolly personality to synergise with Coca-Cola’s brand image and its target audience of the entire family.

• This version of Santa became instantly iconic and remains popular today.

• Coca-Cola’s branding is effective because it comes from an emotional place.

• After decades, the brand doesn’t innovate to change its flavour and still uses the same logo font to invoke warm feelings from its legacy. 

• Coca-Cola’s unique selling point isn’t about producing a fizzier, sweeter or even healthier soda, it’s about selling the “joyful” experience of an ice-cold coke.

• Whilst Coca-Cola moulded its iconic Santa, KFC Japan piggy-backed on this design and dominates the Christmas tradition in Japan.

• Since the mid-1980s, Japan’s KFCs would dress Colonel Sanders up as Santa to promote their Party-barrel chicken (Sanders already looks the part with his white beard and moustache).

• In Japan, KFC has become synonymous with Christmas.

In 2018, KFC Japan made $53million in sales from Dec 23-25. That’s 10% of its yearly sales ($540million) from the Christmas weekend.

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This series is brought to you by Lee Way (@leewaylau). He will be writing about political & societal issues, history, movies and music on What's Up Wednesday.