Benchmarking In Their Blood

An Exclusive Interview
With Santa Claus:
Inside measurement
at the North Pole.

by William Paarlberg

(One of Haddon Sundblom’s
illustrations of Santa Claus
for Coca-Cola®.*)

It‘s not every day that I get an email from Santa Claus inviting me to interview him on his PR measurement techniques. So I eagerly packed my notebook and earmuffs and hopped into the limo that came to pick me up. Next thing I knew, I was in a windowless Lear jet, on my way to an undisclosed location.

I got off the plane in the middle of ice and snow in every direction, howling wind, and no sun shining, even though it was the middle of the day. I was led to a little bunker-like building. Just inside, a burly older guy in a nice suit held an elevator door open for me. In I went.

Santa’s Workshop Revealed

The glass-walled elevator started downward, and we descended past floor after floor of offices and cubicle farms swarming with busy executive types in dark suits. The big guy announced, “Welcome to the North Pole!” and handed me his card: Kris Kringle, CEO, Santa Claus, Inc.

“Whoa, let me guess, Mr. Kringle,” I said, rolling my eyes, “There is no Santa Claus and this is where I learn the true meaning of Christmas.”

“Well, you’re half right, kid,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “And you can call me Kris.”

The elevator stopped and we walked across a large room, filled with people at desks and charts on the walls. A couple of clean-cut, earnest young men approached us and handed Mr. Kringle a clipboard with some charts on it. He studied them for a moment: “This one is good, this one just doesn’t have a big enough sample, and these people—” he slashed a line through something, “know better than to send me AVEs.” The two guys hustled off to a busy conference table.

“All right, then, Kris.” I said in my best wise-guy reporter voice, “I get it. This is Santa’s workshop. Yeah, right. So when are we gonna see the elves at work?”

He turned to me with a smile and shook his head slowly from side to side. “You just did, kid.”

Santa Brings Me Up To Speed

“Look, let me fill you in fast, here, and you just try to hang on. I know you’re thinking reindeer, sleigh, fat guy in a red suit, right? Wrong. This is big business—really big business—and Santa—” he smiled proudly, “is just the front man.

“Look at what we’ve got here,” said Kringle, as he waved at the blinking lights of a huge wall diagram. “Production, Distribution, R&D... This is the Emerald City, buddy, and you’re talking to the man behind the curtain. Yeah, OK, once in a while I put the fat suit on and make a few appearances down at the mall, but most of the time I’m taking meetings with the Head of Production and trying to think up new toy ideas.”

I staggered backwards into a handy chair.

“Come on, you think the Jolly Green Giant is really out there growing peas? I hate to break it to you like this, kid, but there really is a Santa Claus, and he’s a $57 billion industry. And like any big corporation, we’ve got an image to promote and a reputation to keep up. Hell, buddy, you’re in PR, you know how much work all this takes.”

“Now, according to my watch,” he consulted a gold Rolex on a surprisingly thick and hairy wrist, “you’ve only got 47 minutes left in this interview. You want to just sit there with your mouth hanging open, or you want to see some kick-ass PR measurement in action?”

“Uh, yeah, you’re the boss, Mr. Kringle.”

The PR Measurement Behind Santa Claus

“Right, then,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Now follow me and listen up. I don’t have to tell you how much of what Santa Claus does is based on our image. I don’t even want to think about how much we spend on PR.

“For instance, we’ve got a whole floor full of Juilliard graduates that sit just there and make up new holiday carols that mention Santa. Hey, no joke. They’re a long shot, I admit, but some of them pay off big. Take that ‘Here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane’ ditty. Yeah, we were just in the right place at the right time with that and bang! it really took off. You can’t get coverage like that anymore.

“Keep in mind that holiday airtime is a very big part of our communications mix. Later I'll show you some playlist stats that will knock your stockings off. Every year we get just a little more airtime—although this year the late Thanksgiving is hurting us some.”

“Now, take a look over there, that’s our Naughty and Nice Team. Talk about your difficult measurement problem! The whole “checking it twice” requirement means a huge investment on our part. ‘Course we’ve got our legion of Santas doing survey interviews at malls. But what’s really important, as you well know, is the outcome—how they actually behaved—rather than what they report to Santa. Just might be some bias there on Santa’s lap, don’t you think?” He laid a finger alongside his nose and gave me a wink.

“Last year we knew we needed to upgrade our N&N measurement, so we spread some grant money around. What do you know, a couple of professors from Maryland and Florida worked up a multivariate approach. It starts with a behavioral scale that rates the kids’ relationships with their parents, teachers and neighbors. Then there’s a slew of correction factors for things like honesty, cleanliness and ‘plays well with others.’ It means a hell of a lot of snooping around by the elves, I can tell you. It’s not too bad in North America though, since recently we get to piggy-back on a lot of that FBI data.

“Another approach still in beta is a brand-new game theory model this kid from Cal Tech thought up. Did you know that if you define the parameters right, you can frame the whole naughty/nice tradeoff as an n-person zero-sum game? You got some time later, you talk to Gordon over there, he’ll tell you all about it.”

“Gosh, Kris, I must say I'm surprised to see you so current on the latest in PR measurement and evaluation.”

“Well, kid, what do you expect, I read your newsletter every month. Ho, ho, ho! But seriously, way back when I was still a startup as Father Christmas, me and the Mrs. used to do all this ourselves. I had to be good at measurement ’cause there was no one else to do it. But times change, you know, and sooner or later I had to enter the 18th Century. That’s when I brought on the elves and went through the whole rebranding to Santa Claus. Now that was a measurement nightmare.

“You know, kid, Santa Claus is a very private company, and we can’t just go out and hire someone to do media analysis for us. We gotta do most of this stuff in house. Until just recently we had a whole private army of readers, but now we’ve got some new software that really helps out there.”

“How about the competition, Mr. Claus?”

“Now, you wouldn't think competition is something we worry too much about, and it’s true; Santa is the undisputed king of the toy holiday franchises. But, I tell you, boy, the holiday racket is a tough one. You got to know when to fight ’em and when to join ’em. Our merger with the Christ child’s birthday was a smart move. Well, in your little neck of the woods, anyway. It hasn’t helped us much in China or India, for instance. The whole gift-giving dynamic just plays a little different with Buddha in the background, you know.

In North America, we do have to keep close tabs on the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. But I’ll tell you, what I'm more than a bit worried about is Halloween. No joke, it’s coming on strong. And, measurement-wise, it's real tough to keep tabs on. Take the Easter Bunny. Now, I can do a nice clean comparison of coverage. But how are we supposed to measure that damn Halloween? What do I benchmark against? The Great Pumpkin? Elvira? You and your buddy Katie got any ideas on that, I'd sure love to hear them.

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, kid, but I gotta go. It’s that time of year, you know.”

“Thanks for talking to The Measurement Standard, Santa. Maybe we’ll catch you again next year? And, hey, before I go, can I just mention that awesome new 32" Sony HDTV—”

“Relax, kid,” he said with a wink, “You write up a decent interview and we’ll see what we can do.”

*The Coca-Cola Company is owner of the trademarks COCA-COLA, COKE, the design of the contour bottle, and the design of the COCA-COLA Santa. "Coca-Cola" Images: © The Coca-Cola Company.

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