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Tracking Santa: Experiential Marketing from NORAD

Dec 24, 2008 Family and Friends, PR

santa You aren’t tired of my Holiday posts are you?

There have been a few I admit:

I guess the holidays’ (Hanukkah and Christmas for my family) are on my mind! Today we wait for Santa. I remember when I was younger we would watch the news after dinner on Christmas Eve, and they would “track Santa”. They would show maps from NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) indicating the location of Santa at that exact moment. It was quite exciting. So I looked it up for my three year-old.

NORAD of course is on the web with its Santa Tracker. No need to wait for the news any more! Currently Santa is in China (Map powered by Google) You can even see a video of him leaving the North Pole this year on YouTube. Yeah, for Social Media Santa! picture-101

Did you ever wonder why Norad Tracks Santa? It is an interesting story :

1955 Sears ran an advertisement with a number to call Santa. Only problem is they forget to review the ad apparently and the number was printed incorrectly. Instead the number put kids through to NORAD’s predecesser Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD)…and the Commander in Chief no less! The Director at the time had his staff check the radar for Santa, and gave the updates to the children calling for Santa Claus. Today they have volunteers who answer emails, phone calls and of course help to track Saint Nick.

NORAD’s day job: They are the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada. NORAD provides advanced warning of impending missile and air attack against its member nations, safeguards the air sovereignty of North America, and maintains airborne forces for defense against attack.

Santa Tracker seems a brilliant PR play…however accidental. I wonder if this is one of the early examples of Experiential Marketing?

More on Santa and PR: Check out Dave Fleet’s humourous post “If I Were Santa’s Pubic Relations Guy” where Dave comes up with some PR 2.0 ideas for Mr. Claus and his North Pole crew. (Note: Read the comments too I added a few ideas!)

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Tags: experiential marketing, holidays, norad, PR, santa, santa tracker

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under Family and Friends, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.