What Would Santa Look Like If He Was Created Today? - | Clapboard Ad Archive

Magnum Opus Partners’ 2018 campaign What Would Santa Look Like If He Was Created Today? offers a compelling self-promotional exploration of how advertising has historically shaped cultural icons, using the globally recognized figure of Santa Claus as its creative fulcrum. Launched in Australia within the media and entertainment category, this film uses a FORMAT#11 UNIQUE PERSONALITY PROPERTY approach to interrogate the evolution and diverse interpretations of Santa across various cultures, emphasizing how the jolly, red-suited image popularized by Coca-Cola’s mid-20th-century advertising was just one iteration among many. The campaign surveys a rich tapestry of global representations—from the British Santa clad in green with a holly wreath, to Russia’s snow demon and snow maiden, Sweden’s dwarf-like Santa, Iceland’s thirteen elves, and the benevolent female Christ Child figure prominent in Germany, Austria, and Central Europe. It also highlights how Hispanic cultures celebrate the Three Wise Men as the gift-bringers on January 6th rather than Christmas Day, underscoring the multiplicity of festive mythologies. Magnum Opus Partners challenges the nostalgic archetype by imagining how a contemporary creative collective might reinvent Santa for today’s culturally diverse and digitally connected world, positioning the agency’s own inventive storytelling as the product. This singular film asset functions simultaneously as a festive greeting and a meta-commentary on advertising’s role in crafting and perpetuating cultural narratives, inviting audiences to reconsider one of the most enduring holiday legends through a playful and fresh lens that reflects current creative trends and societal diversity. The campaign earns 62/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matters to the industry because it demonstrates how agency self-promotion can transcend mere showreel tactics by engaging with cultural history and identity, thereby signaling that creative work grounded in thoughtful cultural critique can elevate agency narratives within the competitive media and entertainment landscape.