Chapter 10: Badvertising

Overview

How Madison Avenue Killed Rock 'n' Roll

I'd like to build the world a home and furnish it with love, Grow apple trees and honeybees, and snow-white turtle doves. Id like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, Id like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company, It's is the real thing, Coke is what the world wants today.

”from "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" by the New Seekers

On January 18, 1971, Bill Backer, the creative director on the Coca-Cola account for McCann-Erickson, scribbled, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company," on the back of a crumpled paper napkin. It was the origin of the most popular television commercial and jingle in advertising history! Backer was flying to London to join two other songwriters, Billy Davis and Roger Cook, to write a Coca-Cola jingle for the singing group the New Seekers. Heavy fog at London's Heathrow Airport forced Backer's plane to land at Shannon Airport in Ireland. After a bumpy flight and lots of circling, the passengers were furious. To add insult to injury , only one hotel was available in Shannon, and the irate travelers were obliged to share rooms with one another. Tempers flared!

The next morning, as the passengers gathered in the airport coffee shop, awaiting flight clearance, Backer noticed that some of the angriest ones were now laughing and sharing stories over bottles of Coke. As Backer recalls in his book, The Care and Feeding of Ideas (Times Books, 1993),

That moment I began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink. I began to see the familiar words, "Let's have a Coke," as a subtle way of saying, "Let's keep each other company for a little while." The basic idea was to see Coke not as it was originally designed ”as a liquid refreshment ”but as a tiny bit of commonality between all people, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.

So Backer turned over a paper napkin and scribbled his now-famous line on the back. Bill Backer was a genius, and in advertising's heyday (the 1970s and 1980s), many a great idea originated on the back of a napkin! On a hillside in Italy in April of 1971, buzzing helicopters filmed 1,200 children wearing the clothes of their various nations, assembled to lip-sync "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" for the rolling cameras . Three months from napkin to jingle to commercial! That's the way advertising was created back then. No committees , no research ”only good ideas (and awful ones) that saw the light of day. Believe it or not, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" was initially a flop! The Coca-Cola bottlers refused to buy airtime for it until Bill Backer prevailed.

Figure 10.1: American Memory Coca-Cola advertisement Web site

I produced television commercials in advertising's heyday. My first job was at Jerry Ansel Studios, a carriage house on East 38th Street that was converted into a film studio. Jerry was a one-man band ”producer, director, cameraman, and editor. All of the equipment necessary to shoot commercials was under that roof. Fueled by piping-hot pots of Melita espresso, Jerry hardly ever slept. He literally shot commercials around the clock. Jerry was so accustomed to gazing through the viewfinder of his Arriflex camera that his right eye was fixed in a permanent squint!

I remember Hill, Holliday, Connors, and Cosmopulos ”not agency personnel, but the actual guys after whom the agency was named ”flying down from Boston on the 6 a.m. Eastern shuttle. Jerry and I would pick them up at LaGuardia airport, and by the time we hit the Holland Tunnel, Jerry and the boys would have whipped up a new spot or ad campaign. And we'd stay there and shoot it until it was done ”for days if necessary!

Figure 10.2: The Hill \ Holliday Web site