Which Hollywood Santa has the best PR strategy?

December is the most wonderful time of the year for staying in, getting comfy, and of course watching Christmas movies. Following our October look at Halloween’s greatest marketers, we wanted to take a sleigh-ride through the PR strategies of the many different iterations of Santa and see what lessons to take into 2026.

The Santa Clause (1994) – Tim Allen

At first this seems like a classic version of the tale, where magic is real, the North Pole is filled with elves, and there are strict rules for the naughty and nice list. BUT… there is a twist: Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) becomes Santa by accident when the original Santa slips from his roof. Judging by the nonchalant reaction from the elves at the news their previous Santa is dead, this must have happened countless times in the elves’ long life spans.

What is the PR lesson?
At first glance Scott Calvin was not a great hire. He is put in the top position in a well-established business and unable to combine his understanding of modern toy making processes with the existing workforce. This is not too dissimilar from the actual UK industrial skills gap with that crucial knowledge of the existing workforce reaching retirement age without a supply of new talent.

But can this skills gap be mitigated through perception? In our real world, industrial facilities are some of the most technologically advanced in the world, packed with automation, digital twins, advanced AI, and highly sophisticated machines. Yet, without first hand experience or exposure to industrial job roles, it can look like ‘Santa’s workshop’ from the outside. It’s up to industrial businesses to shout about their innovation, and look into new channels to do it, that is where industrial PR can help.

Just as Scott eventually convinces his family he is in fact Santa and saves Christmas, ensuring that new and old workforces alike have the right skills and that the right audiences know can help UK industry deliver bigger, better results.

Elf (2003) – Edward Asner

No Christmas is complete without the Will Ferrell comedy classic of Buddy the Elf. In that movie, alongside the gripping tale of Buddy looking for his real father in New York, Santa is losing his powers because the world has stopped believing in him.  Santa has tried to mitigate this risk through technology (such as a rocket-powered sleigh). However, public perception of Christmas has slipped – and a loss of belief has put Christmas is at risk. Santa wrongly believes that keeping his business going as usual will be enough to get his message out there. It’s only at the end of the movie when Buddy leads a singalong and Santa appears on TV that enough belief returns for the sleigh to fly. Something Santa should have been doing the whole time.

What is the PR lesson?
To get an audience to resonate with a message requires more than just a good story. It means telling that story where the audience is. There are multiple channels available that offer staggering audience figures, but are they the best audience for your business? For companies with industrial customers, the industrial trade press can deliver highly specialised audiences, where every reader represents a potential customer.

In Elf, Santa hasn’t reviewed or changed his audience channels until the end of the movie. By appearing on TV his message reaches exactly who he needed to raise belief. Industrial PR strategies must always be audience-led before delivering product messages. It’s about understanding how an audience consumes and interacts with content and delivering messages accordingly.

Fatman (2020) – Mel Gibson

A slightly different take on the traditional story with everyone in the world knowing that Santa not only exists but is a manufacturer. Chris Cringle runs a highly specialised, local operation with skilled labour, ethical standards, and a long reputation of excellence. But operating at such high standards brings costs which means that Santa can’t match prices with international competitors who don’t play by the same rules.

What is the PR lesson?
Reputation alone is not enough to grow business. While there may always be consumers and businesses that compete on cost alone, it’s often better for a local business to compete on high-value benefits such as reliability, minimum order quantity (MOQ), flexibility, quality, ethical standards, sustainability or a product’s lifetime energy-saving potential. In the film, Mel Gibson’s Santa is losing business because he hasn’t kept control of the story. Being a trusted local supplier is something to celebrate, and delivers benefits that far outweigh the small cost savings of buying cheap. In 2026 we want to see more industrial businesses showing how they impact the local area, boosting the economy, and creating new job roles.

Christmas movies are a lot of fun and definitely not to be taken too seriously. But occasionally, if we look deep enough, there are some great PR lessons to be learnt from a story that has been told 1000s of times.