Analyzing Famous Coke Commercial

Here is a link to the text I’ll be talking about in this blog post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VM2eLhvsSM

The link above is of a very famous commercial shot in the 70’s titled “Hilltop” or “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” One of the things I like about this commercial is the way in which it accounts for the audience and makes an attempt to appeal to them. During the time in which the commercial was shot, there was a lot of unrest occurring as the U.S. was tired of fighting the war in Vietnam, and people wanted to bring the army back home. This commercial is essentially a call to action to bring about peace. It’s meant to call the world together to celebrate peace and share that peace while drinking a coke. What I really love about this commercial is how it creates a call to action for peace which appeals to the vast majority of America at that time while at the same time marketing a product. A lot of times trying to appeal to an audience while creating a call to action for major events going on in the world can be risky. It paid off with this commercial as now it’s one of the most famous commercials ever. However, commercials that have tried similar things have failed to appeal to the audience and instead have backfired badly. An example would be the Pepsi commercial with Kylie Jenner in which the commercial tried to make a bold statement but instead didn’t really make a statement at all which left the audience furious and led to a serious backlash of Pepsi.

This text can have many different genres, but I suppose the genre I would choose is film as the commercial was shot using film and aired on live television in the 70’s. I think it makes sense that this text was meant to air on television and not the radio or be published in magazines or newspapers. See there’s many different ways in which products can be advertised. And new forms of advertising are always being discovered. But I really like how this particular advertisement was shot in film because to me that’s how it makes its strongest statement providing the audience with both visuals and sounds. With any other form of advertisement, it’s really one or the other. You can have sound as with radio advertisements or you can have visuals as with ads in magazines or newspapers, but film is the only genre of advertising in which both can be featured. And I feel like without having both sound visuals featured the statement in which the ad was created to make just isn’t as strong.

Lastly, I like the design of the advertisement. I like how all the pieces of the puzzle come together to form the design of this advertisement. You have the song, you have a wide diversity of people of different races, ages, and genders, and you have this nice peaceful hill in which these people gather around to share a coke spread the love. All these pieces are a part of the design and when they all come together they create an advertisement that is and forever shall be remembered for years to come.