When childhood letters get answered years later
The city of Santa Claus is situated in the state of Indiana, USA. The museum in the city brings together different objects related to Santa Claus and has long received letters from people around the world, described as doing so for more than 70 years.
Coca-Cola with its ad agency Ogilvy Brazil selected 75 forgotten letters and set out on an impossible task to find the writers and give them exactly what they asked for. The result was a touching movie that reinforces the magic of Christmas.
The impossible brief behind the film
The mechanism is straightforward and brutal in effort. Find a place where old letters to Santa were kept. Read through decades of messages that never got a reply. Select a small set of letters. Then track down the original writers and recreate the exact gifts they once requested.
“Forgotten letters” here means letters that were written to Santa as children, then stored and left unanswered for years.
In global FMCG holiday marketing, the fastest route to belief is to make generosity observable in the real world, not just promised in a tagline.
Santa’s Forgotten Letters is a Coca-Cola Christmas campaign by Ogilvy Brazil that turns archival letters into real deliveries, using the act of fulfillment as the proof of the story.
Why it lands: belief becomes physical
This works because it reverses the usual Christmas-ad formula. Instead of asking the audience to feel something while watching a film, it shows a real-world action first. The emotion is earned by the logistics.
The letters also do the writing for the brand. Each request is specific, personal, and time-stamped by childhood. That specificity makes the surprise feel less like marketing and more like closure.
The business intent hiding inside the sentiment
Coca-Cola is reinforcing a familiar role in the season. It wants to be the brand that protects the “magic” adults quietly miss, and it does that by staging a story people retell without needing to mention product features.
This is brand meaning built through a single, high-signal act that generates a long tail of earned conversation.
What to steal if you want emotion without manipulation
- Start with an artifact, not an insight. Real letters, real handwriting, real specificity.
- Make the work visible. Show the searching, the tracking, the making, the delivery.
- Let the recipients carry the truth. The reactions are the credibility layer.
- Limit the scope to protect authenticity. A small number of deliveries can feel more believable than a mass stunt.
A few fast answers before you act
What is Coca-Cola’s Santa’s Forgotten Letters campaign?
It is a Christmas film built around a real-world stunt: Coca-Cola and Ogilvy Brazil selected 75 old letters to Santa from Santa Claus, Indiana, tracked down the writers, and delivered the gifts they once asked for.
Why does the “old letters” device work so well?
Because it provides built-in authenticity and specificity. A handwritten childhood request feels personal and irrefutable, which makes the fulfillment feel earned rather than manufactured.
What should brands learn from the execution?
If you want belief, make the action do the persuading. Put the effort on-screen, keep the promise simple, and let real reactions confirm the story.
