Santa Claus has been around for a long time, but there wasn’t a consistent image of what he looked like.At times, he was depicted as a tall, skinny man, and other drawings made him look likea scary elf. During the Civil War, Santa was shown as a supporter of the Union Army.
Then, in the 1930s, Coca-Cola decided that it needed help to boost winter sales of the soft drink. Coke was known as a summer beverage, and sales plummeted during the winter months.
The bottler had to go all the way to the North Pole to find the one person who could bolster cola sales in winter. Since there wasn’t a universally accepted image of Santa, Coca-Cola was free to make Kris Kringle look any way it wanted.
They hired Haddon Sundblom, a talented commercial artist in the 1930s to transform Santa Claus into the modern image we all know and love today.
Haddon Sundblom was a talented commercial artist who created the jolly fat man for Coca-Cola in 1931. who was hired by Coca-Cola in 1931. The inspiration for Santa came from Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” The illustration debuted in The Saturday Evening Post soon after.
For Coca-Cola, the new Santa campaign was a huge success. So, from 1931 to 1964, Sundblom created all of Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus advertisements.
