We have a pretty specific image of Santa Claus: Jolly belly, red coat with a white trim, and a long white beard. But surprisingly, Santa did not always appear this way. His depiction evolved over time due to advertising — and St. Louis had a direct link to how we see Santa today.
Frank Absher, a St. Louis media historian, told KMOX how the current image of Santa Claus came to be.
“St. Louis actually developed an image of Santa that was not solely theirs. But Thomas Nast, of course, and various people along the line had created Santas,” Absher said. “When Coca Cola was advertising heavily in print media, they used the St. Louis agency D'arcy Advertising.”
One of Coca Cola’s first ads featuring Santa showed him as “rather harried,” Absher said, and had him pictured in the world’s largest soda fountain in Famous-Barr in downtown. But then Archie Lee, D’arcy’s account executive for Coca Cola, wanted something different.
“They brought in a man named Haddon Sundblom, who was another freelance artist, and turned him loose. And he came up with the jolly elf Santa Claus with the rosy cheeks and the red, large belly and all that stuff,” Absher said. “And he did an ad for Coca Cola in 1931 that started 32 consecutive years of him doing Santa Claus at Christmas time for Coca Cola.”
And those ads became widespread. Absher said that D’arcy knew to buy the back covers of national magazines like National Geographic, Life, and Good House Care.
“They considered that a billboard that was in your room with you,” he explained. “There was a 50% chance that that back cover was going to be turned up when it was laid down somewhere, and you'd be seeing that ad. So they had a lock on back cover advertising.”
Hear more about the history of Santa Claus and how his image came to be from Total Information AM:
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