Coca-Cola's association with Christmas dates back a century, according to the company, as its now-iconic holiday Santas debuted in the 1920s.

This marriage of marketing and merriment has served the brand well, and according to Business Insider, Coke is hoping to catch that lightning in a slightly new bottle for another holiday that is rapidly becoming commercialized: Halloween.

What's happening?

"Coca-Cola claimed Christmas," AdWeek observed in August in coverage of the conglomerate's brewing plans for one of its sub-brands.

Fanta is under the Coca-Cola umbrella. The brand has a checkered past and comes in no fewer than nine official variations, "Fanta Orange" being the most prominent among them.

Coke has set its sights on Halloween, in the hope that the holiday can "be to Fanta what Christmas is to Coke," in the words of Ibrahim Khan, Fanta's global vice president.

In August, AdWeek reported that Coca-Cola had undertaken its "biggest-ever global promotion" to begin its efforts to make Fanta the "Christmas Coke" of Halloween, thanks to its orange coloring with Yellow 6 and Red 40 — both of which are produced with crude oil byproducts. 

The brand developed a blockbuster collaboration with Universal Pictures and horror film production outfit Blumhouse in New York City for late October, the Haunted Fanta Factory. 

In addition to an in-person experience, Coca-Cola produced promotional cans, an AMC-exclusive Fanta flavor, and satellite events around the world. Khan noted that a soft launch of Halloween-themed Fanta in 2024 was successful, inspiring the brand to lean in.

He cited waning interest in broadcast advertising, prompting Coke to turn to the real world.

"In this day and age, where our ability to speak to a captive audience on a television set is gone, we have to find different ways of connecting," Khan said of the brand's Fanta-related ambitions. He also noted that Halloween spending had steadily increased in recent years.

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"Halloween as a festival is becoming insanely big and global," he observed.

Why is this important?

The connection between Coca-Cola and Christmas is so old that it predates most living memory, and the brand has leveraged this for decades to bolster a massive marketing machine.

Coca-Cola's Christmas advertising strategy hinges in part on increased consumption, and the brand's global website hosts a section where consumers can stock up on Coke merch, two-thirds of which is holiday-related. 

In the United Kingdom, a waste and recycling company raised concerns about Coca-Cola's Christmas marketing, which entailed driving a large truck "more than 3,000 miles up and down the country for no clear purpose" using about as much fuel as the average family does in a year. In 2017, Greenpeace satirized Coke's involvement in Christmas by producing a video in which Santa Claus dumps a truck full of used plastic bottles into the ocean. 

The environmental impact of pop-up advertising and excess consumption for holiday promotions is just one of the brand's many environmental concerns.

In December, WRAL reported that Coke "dramatically" whittled down its promises to produce less plastic, causing backlash.

Coca-Cola was named the world's worst plastic polluter for six consecutive years and has been repeatedly called out for greenwashing.

What can be done about Coke's greenwashing?

In May, Coca-Cola agreed to amend its labeling in response to a formal greenwashing complaint filed in Europe.

Educating yourself about greenwashing makes it easier to support brands with genuinely eco-friendly practices.

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