Ad Men: The Back Story

“We had to have some material,” he said. “I wanted to keep my job.”

The next day, Mr. Backer said, he observed some of the passengers — “all types, ages, sexes,” he recalled — in the airport, talking and sharing bottles of warm Coca-Cola. Their frustration seemed to have dissipated. It was then, he said, that the now famous jingle came to him. On a napkin, he scribbled, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.”
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“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,” Mr. Backer wrote, according to Coca-Cola’s website.

What was initially a radio ad eventually became a television commercial with young people singing together on a hillside.
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