"Most people can agree on what Santa Claus looks like -- jolly, with a red suit and a white beard. But he did not always look that way, and Coca-Cola® advertising actually helped shape this modern-day image of Santa." That is a quote from Coca-Cola's website, from a page titled "Coke Lore".
Indeed, Santa did not always look that way. He did not always appear as a jolly fat man in a red suit, with his trademark red hat with the white poof at the end. In fact, he did not always appear in any "one" way. Instead, as the Coke Lore site explains, Santa's look ranged from "big to small and fat to tall. Santa even appeared as an elf and looked a bit spooky"
According to the Saint Nicholas Center, Alexander Anderson drew Santa for its first Saint Nicholas anniversary dinner on December 6, 1810. See directly above.
Thomas Nast, a civil war cartoonist, drew Santa for Harper's Weekly. It was a far cry from the Santa that Coke created. See directly above.
Maybe the presence of cocaine in Coca-Cola early in the life of the soft drink helped. If the quasi-ownership of Christmas's central character isn't enough, Coca-Cola has remained viable through anti-Semitism. Coke created a brand called Fanta Orange in order to keep up its sales to Nazis during WWII.
Coke's branding genius is not in a league of its own. Listerine began its life as a floor cleaner, an anti-septic, and a treatment for gonorrhea. Then, the branding strategists created the word "halitosis", and sales took off. Kleenex became famous for its ad campaign "Don’t Carry a Cold in Your Pocket", but the tissue brand started by advertising its products ability to remove makeup.
So, brands change, with advertising... The more effective these ads are, the more likely the company is to rebrand itself.
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