Hilltop ("I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke")

Why it works

The template for the brand anthem: no product demo, no claims — just a song, a hillside outside Rome, and young people from around the world holding bottles. Creative director Bill Backer wrote the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" on a napkin after a fog-grounded flight left furious strangers sharing Cokes in a Shannon airport café; the resulting jingle became the commercial, and the commercial became a pop song twice over ("I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"). Released in July 1971 against the backdrop of the Vietnam era, it drew more than 100,000 letters to Coca-Cola, with radio stations fielding requests to play an advertisement. It is studied as the purest case of a brand selling a feeling — unity — and attaching the product to it with a single possessive line. Its $250,000 budget made it the most expensive commercial produced to that point.