Santa Claus (Haddon Sundblom's Coca-Cola Santas)

Why it works

The Santa much of the world pictures, warm, plump, rosy-cheeked and grandfatherly, owes a great deal to a soft-drink campaign. In 1931 Archie Lee of the D'Arcy agency wanted a wholesome Santa for Coca-Cola's Christmas advertising who was both realistic and symbolic, and illustrator Haddon Sundblom painted him from Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", first using a retired salesman friend as his model and later himself. The paintings ran in The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, National Geographic and The New Yorker, and Coca-Cola's Santa advertising ran on Sundblom's paintings until 1964. It is studied as the textbook case of a brand attaching itself to a cultural ritual so thoroughly that its version became the default image. The company itself corrects the myth the campaign spawned: Santa already wore red before Sundblom, so Coca-Cola did not pick his colours. It simply gave him the face people still remember.