Mad Men's seven season run came to a fond and heartfelt farewell on Saturday night, and everyone is dead. Just kidding! Or are we?
We're not going down the route of "*spoiler alerts*" on our first day, but the final scenes of Mad Men may have been of particular interest to hoards of unsuspecting Irish fans, with the show featuring Coca Cola's iconic 'I'd like to buy the world a Coke' commercial from 1971).
Interestingly, the Coca Cola website reveals the origins of the 'Hillside' ad in real life, and the Irish twist which inspired it. In reality, the commercial was born of a creative director named Bill Backer, who at the time was flying to London to meet with fellow advertisers along with famed songwriting duo, Rogers Cook and Greenway, in an effort to brainstorm a new ad for the firm. Backer was greeted instead by a storm of a more Irish variety, when his flight was forced to land in Shannon Airport due to bad weather.
While sitting in Shannon, Backer noticed how passengers - initially enraged by the delay - all cooled down as soon as they sat down with a meal and a Coke in the airport's café.
Backer said,
In that moment [I] saw a bottle of Coke in a whole new light… [I] began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink that refreshed a hundred million people a day in almost every corner of the globe. So [I] began to see the familiar words, ‘Let’s have a Coke,’ as more than an invitation to pause for refreshment. They were actually a subtle way of saying, ‘Let’s keep each other company for a little while.’ And [I] knew they were being said all over the world as [I] sat there in Ireland. So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be — a liquid refresher — but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.
Here's Backer himself on the iconic advert:
Might as well have called it 'Fir Fearg'.
H/T: TIME
Tags:
