Para todos

Why it works

Coca-Cola bottles and cans appear against a plain white background while a voice works through the people the drink is for: the fat and the thin, the tall and the short, those who laugh, the optimists, those who cry, those who have nothing, and finally everyone, "para todos". McCann Erickson Argentina, under creative director Martín Mercado, made it in 2002, in what Página/12 called the worst crisis anyone could remember, when budgets were tiny and commercials scarce. It is studied as crisis-era craft: one object, one voice and almost no production, yet the product never leaves the screen and the film moves without turning sentimental. It topped a Página/12 poll of thirty agency creatives on the year's best commercial. It won a Silver Lion at Cannes and El Ojo de Iberoamérica's Grand Prix for best regional campaign, and it travelled: in a 2011 survey in Spain, more respondents picked "Para todos" than any other ad as the one they most associated with Coca-Cola.