‘Twas the night before Christmas, and as I put my daughters to bed, the oldest, Grace, asked, “Can we track Santa on your computer, Dad?” It was way past bedtime, but I couldn’t resist. Grace is 8-going-on-18 and the chance to let her fully believe in Santa for maybe the last Christmas tugged at my heart.

So… away to the laptop I flew like a flash

Booted it up, hoping for not a crash

Jammed in the Sprint card and pulled up the Net

Figured a search on Google would be the best bet

Soon a smile on our faces started to grow

For Santa was just crossing o’er the Gulf of Mexico

Thanks to NORAD and Google we found Kringle in flight

And I tucked Grace in for a long winter’s night.

All bad poems aside, it was really a special father-daughter moment to pull up the NORAD Santa tracker and see where he was along his journey. And I kept thinking about this tool days after Christmas. I wondered why NORAD, a government agency that tracks incoming nuclear missiles, would be the organization that tracked Santa on behalf of the world’s citizens. I was surprised not to see a for-profit company such as Sears, USA Today, or Coca-Cola take the reigns of this annual tradition.

So I consulted Wikipedia, of course, and discovered a very interesting story of how NORAD got into the Santa-tracking business all the way back in 1955. It seems that marketing did have something to do with it, in a roundabout way. That year, Sears advertised a telephone hotline that children could call to speak with Santa. But the ad printed the wrong number, sending children to NORAD instead. Rather than turning eager children down, the surprised NORAD officers accepted the calls and began giving Santa’s position on the radar.

From there follows a history of continuous upgrades, improvements, and generations of magical moments for children around the world. Now, of course, Santa can be tracked live online, and even through Twitter.

There are a few really good lessons here. First, it shows how a long-term meaningful marketing investment can pay off. In this case, NORAD has “owned” this valuable service for more than 50 years.  Another good example is Butterball’s turkey help hotline, which has become more interesting and relevant (and itself newsworthy) than any print ad or TV commercial the brand could conceive of.

But the real morale of this story is that organizations can win just by paying attention and doing the right thing. And it often comes down to your company culture and individuals’ care for their customers to unlock magical experiences like this.

Happy holidays to all of you. I cannot wait to continue the Marketing with Meaning revolution with you in 2009!

Bob