Coca-Cola ad features NASCAR drivers playing nice
It's the advertising idea that keeps resurfacing at Coca-Cola: The soda brings people together in a spirit of harmony.
A 60-second ad set to debut Sunday during the Daytona 500 stretches that message into the realm of minor miracle. In the ad, stressed-out NASCAR drivers develop a spirit of harmony and cooperation mere seconds after swigging Coca-Cola. In less than a lap, everybody is singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke."
That song hearkens back to a commercial which first aired in 1971. "Hilltop" featured a multi-ethnic chorus belting out the song and reminding viewers that Coke is "the real thing." The ad's focus on happiness has become a central feature of Coke's marketing theme.
"Hilltop" has been reincarnated five times in Coca-Cola's history. Christmas versions of the ad came out in 1971 and 1977. Then, there was a "reunion" ad in 1990, for which Coca-Cola brought as many of the original actors as it could find to the same Italian hilltop.
In 2005, Coca-Cola issued an updated Coke Zero version of the ad called "Chilltop." The commercial, filmed in 103-degree heat on a Philadelphia rooftop, was built around the slogan "everybody chill."
The ad debuts as the flagship Coca-Cola brand saw its sales volume grow 4 percent across the world in the company's most recent quarter. But Coca-Cola Co. is struggling to turn around its carbonated soft drink business in North America.
Even though the NASCAR ad is full of grinding gears while the earlier iterations of "Hilltop" had groups of people gathered around a central location, Coke insiders say the theme is consistent. The message is that Coca-Cola "is a small moment of physical uplift that makes you feel good," said Pio Schunker, senior vice president for creative excellence at Coca-Cola North America.
