In 1931, artist Haddon Sundblom created magazine ads for Coca‑Cola inspired by Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem ‘The night before Christmas’, featuring St Nicholas as a kind, jovial man in a red suit. However, up until then images of Santa Claus had varied throughout different regions and cultures. Some portrayals even presented him as an elf-like, spooky or scary chatacter – far from the merry old man we know today.CocaCola.co.uk
Who knew that Coca-Cola had so much to do with the largely standardized image of Santa Claus in pop culture today?
Abundance Generation is seizing on Santa and using him in a new campaign. The UK-based green energy crowdfunding platform has launched a Christmas marketing initiative aimed at encouraging Christmas shoppers to give the gift of a share of a green energy project. In the spirit of being “green,” the effort features a green Santa Claus.
Every year, enough rubbish is thrown away at Christmas to cover St Pauls over 1500 times. We think that’s an incredible amount of waste.
Here at Abundance, we agree that it’s time to do Christmas a little differently. You can now give the perfect, green, clutter-free gift in the form of a green energy investment. Buy a share of a solar project through our Christmas Gift Shop and give your friends and family a gift that will keep on giving for nearly 20 years!
Bruce Davis, co-founder and joint managing director of Abundance Generation, shared the following in a statement with BusinessGreen: “We’re stealing Father Christmas from the drinks industry. We’re reuniting him with his green coat because, once again, Christmas is about far more than acquiring ‘things’. There’s a fast-growing shift away from giving material goods, to buying gifts with meaning. We’re pretty sure Father Christmas would approve of our Green Energy Investments.”