🧠 Why Santa Wears Red & Coca-Cola’s Unique Role In It

Today’s Edition of Captivated: Why Santa Wears Red & Coca-Cola’s Unique Role In It

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“Santa Claus is Coming to Town!”

While NORAD is out tracking Santa, let's talk about Santa's instantly recognizable look.

One of the most universal images in the world, a figure recognized across countries and generations, wasn’t shaped by folklore or ancient tradition. It was shaped by ... a soda company.

Every time you see Santa in a red suit smiling on a mug, a shopping bag, or in a holiday ad, you’re looking at one of the most successful brand shaping plays in history. And the psychology behind how Coca-Cola pulled this off is still one of the smartest playbooks for shaping preference, memory, and long-term loyalty.

Today, we’re deep diving into how a beverage brand influenced an entire season, why it worked on the brain level, and how you can steal these strategies ethically to shape how customers see your product.

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📈 FUN FACT: DID YOU KNOW?

Haddon Sundblom created more than 40 original Santa paintings for Coke over 3 decades, many of which were reused, reprinted, and reached millions of people.

🧠

.. How Did We Get Here? ..

Long before Santa settled into the cozy red suit we recognize today, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he was kind of… all over the place.

Early illustrations showed him in different colors, shapes, sizes, and moods, and sometimes even as a wizard, elf or bishop.

Imagine a thin, tall, serious, wizard-like Santa dressed in green. Feels so odd right? While people agreed on the idea of Santa, the image itself was still up for interpretation.

Thomas Nast’s 19th-century drawings helped shape parts of the myth, including Santa living at the North Pole, but even Nast’s Santa changed over time. As magazines reached millions of households, certain versions of Santa showed up more often than others.

In 1931, Coca-Cola commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create a Santa for a winter advertising campaign.

The goal was practical: people didn’t associate cold drinks with winter. Sundblom’s Santa helped make Coca-Cola feel right for the holiday season. He felt human, approachable, and warm. He wore a red suit trimmed in white, had rosy cheeks, and a soft smile that made him feel like someone you’d actually want in your living room.

The campaign worked well enough that Coca-Cola kept bringing him back.

And people kept seeing him. This Santa appeared year after year in high-circulation magazines, store displays, calendars, and eventually on packaging. Over time, this version became the one people recognized instantly and expected to see.

The timing helped too. Coca-Cola’s first Santa arrived during the Great Depression, when people were exhausted and looking for something comforting. Sundblom’s Santa delivered exactly that, a warm, generous figure associated with joy and abundance at a time when people needed it most. That emotional connection helped the image stick.

By the 1950s, Santa in red wasn’t “Coke’s Santa.” It was simply “Santa.”

That’s the power of consistent, memory-shaping branding. Even cultural moments like the creation of NORAD’s Santa Tracker in 1955 helped cement a single, shared Santa narrative across North America. Department stores, holiday movies, and magazines continued to reinforce the same Santa. The more touchpoints that repeated the same look, the stronger it stuck.

By the time modern holiday marketing exploded, Santa already had a uniform.

Today, it’s hard to imagine Santa in anything other than red.

And Santa's image feels timeless, even though the image didn't appear overnight. It settled in gradually, shaped by repetition, familiarity, and perfect cultural timing. Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa, but their version became the one people remembered, returned to, and passed down, until it felt like it had always been part of the holidays.

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.. Brain Science-Backed: The Psychology Behind It ..

Here’s the brain science behind how Coke was able to make such a signature look of the holidays stick:

🧠 THE MERE EXPOSURE EFFECT:

The brain naturally tends to favor things it encounters repeatedly.

Each exposure requires less effort to process, which creates a subtle sense of ease and comfort.

Over time, that ease gets interpreted as familiarity, and familiarity gets interpreted as preference. When an image returns often enough, it starts to feel natural, expected, and emotionally safe, even without conscious attention.

🧠 EMOTIONAL ANCHORING DURING HARD TIMES:

Emotions play a powerful role in how memories form and stick.

During moments of uncertainty or stress, the brain pays closer attention to symbols that offer warmth, comfort, or reassurance.

Images paired with those feelings tend to be encoded more deeply and recalled more easily later on.

Over time, the symbol itself begins to carry the emotional weight of those moments, even when the original context fades. Then, certain images come to feel comforting on their own.

🧠 IDENTITY SIGNALING AND COLLECTIVE CONSISTENCY

The brain uses shared symbols to make sense of group identity.

Santa represents generosity, magic, and childhood wonder. These traits align perfectly with how Coke wanted people to feel: uplifted, connected, and light.

By consistently pairing their product with a universally admired figure, Coke used identity transfer: the brain subconsciously associates the traits of the character with the brand. Over time, Coca-Cola became part of the emotional fabric of the holidays.

When an image appears alongside communal rituals and celebrations, it becomes associated with belonging and shared meaning. Over time, the symbol feels like part of the collective experience itself.

🧠 VISUAL DOMINANCE AND CATEGORY OWNERSHIP:

Visual cues help the brain organize information quickly & most brands fight to ‘own a color’.

Tiffany owns blue. UPS owns brown. Coke tied a character, not just a color, to their brand aesthetic. The red in Santa’s suit mirrors the red on Coca-Cola packaging.

This helped create a feedback loop so strong that holiday advertising from other brands often reinforced Coke’s color palette. Over time, that visual language starts to feel naturally tied to the moment it represents.

🧠 THE CONSISTENCY EFFECT:

The brain loves predictability. It feels good, safe, and easy.

When the same visual or emotional signals return at familiar times, they begin to blend into routines. With repetition, those routines start to feel like traditions people expect and look forward to.

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.. Use this Psychology Strategy ..

Here’s how to apply the same psychological principles to your own brand or product without needing a global ad budget:

1. Pick one signature visual and repeat it everywhere. It could be a color, a shape, a graphic, or a character. Make it instantly recognizable and tie it to your product experience.

2. Tie that visual to a clear emotion people already crave. Coca-Cola paired Santa with warmth, generosity, and comfort during winter. Ask yourself what emotion your audience is looking for. Relief? Excitement? Peace? Pick one and design everything to reinforce it.

3. Become part of a moment or ritual. Coke returned with Santa every winter. You can choose Mondays, paydays, a season, or a cultural moment your audience naturally repeats. Repeating the same moment helps settle into habits people already have.

4. Let memory compound over time. Pick a core visual or story and commit to using it for a full season or year. Resist the urge to refresh it too quickly. Each return will make the image feel familiar and safe. Memory builds through accumulation.

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.. tl;dr & captivated wrap-up ..

So as you’re nestled all snug on the couch on Christmas Eve, maybe watching NORAD track Santa as he zigzags across the globe, you’re looking at an image that feels inseparable from the season. Red suit, white trim, and that jolly smile.

This feeling comes from repetition layered onto emotion. The same Santa returned each winter through familiar holiday imagery, including Coca-Cola’s long-running seasonal illustrations, showing up alongside warmth, anticipation, and shared rituals. Over time, the brain filed that image away as part of the experience itself.

Coca-Cola helped turn an image into a tradition through timing, familiarity, and feeling. Jolly ole Santa in red settled into memory and became part of how the holiday season is seen, felt, and remembered.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you!