The most famous song in soft drink history started with a travel delay. Bill Backer, a creative director at McCann Erickson, Coca-Cola’s advertising agency, was stuck at Shannon Airport in Ireland with songwriters Roger Cook and Billy Davis. The forced layover was full of short tempers, but the next morning Backer noticed his fellow travelers talking and joking over bottles of Coca-Cola.
The drink, he thought, was more than a drink; it was a small, shared moment between strangers. He wrote a line on a napkin: “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”
From napkin to jingle
Backer shared the line with Cook and his songwriting partner Roger Greenaway. The melody came from an earlier Cook and Greenaway song, “True Love and Apple Pie.” Together with Billy Davis, they reworked it into a Coca-Cola radio jingle, recorded in London by the British pop group the New Seekers.
The jingle first aired on American radio on February 12, 1971. The reaction was lukewarm. Not all of Coca-Cola’s bottlers were impressed, and some saw no reason to support it.
Why it became a TV ad
Backer was convinced the song needed pictures. He persuaded McCann Erickson to film a commercial, and the concept was simple: young people from around the world standing together on a hilltop, each holding a bottle of Coke, singing the song.
The first attempt at filming was ruined by rain and other location problems. It was eventually filmed on a hill in the municipality of Manziana, outside Rome. The singers on screen lip-synced to the recording. By the time it was finished, the spot had cost about $250,000, making it the most expensive commercial produced up to that point.
“Hilltop” first aired in July 1971.
A hit twice over
Viewers loved it. After the TV commercial aired, radio stations began getting calls from people asking to hear the song, and it was re-recorded as a full-length pop song without the Coca-Cola references. Two versions, one by the New Seekers and one by the Hillside Singers, both became hits under the title “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony).”
That is rare: an advertising jingle that people bought as music, which in turn advertised the brand every time it played.
Why it worked
- It sold a feeling, not a flavor. The ad barely mentions the drink itself. Like Pepsi’s “Pepsi Generation” campaign a few years earlier, it sold what the brand stood for.
- The timing was right. In a divided era, an image of young people from many countries singing together about harmony struck a chord.
- The song worked without the ad. Because it stood up as a pop song, it kept spreading long after the media budget ran out.
- It fit the brand line. Coca-Cola had introduced “It’s the Real Thing” in October 1969; “Hilltop” gave that slogan an emotional picture.
Legacy
Coca-Cola has revisited the idea many times. A Christmas version known as “Candles” debuted in 1977. In 1990, “Hilltop Reunion” brought back original cast members during Super Bowl XXIV. The melody has been reused for Coca-Cola ads in several countries since.
“Hilltop” regularly appears on lists of the greatest commercials ever made, and it set a template for global brands: find a simple human idea, attach it to a song people want to hear again, and let the song carry the brand.