An Irishwoman’s Diary on teaching the world to sing – from Shannon, a ‘Mad Men’ moment

That the bar in Shannon airport was the birthplace of Irish coffee is well known and not surprising, but that it should also have been the inspiration for one of the most famous advertisements in history – the 1971 “Hilltop” ad for Coca-Cola – is not so obvious. In that gloriously upbeat TV ad, a multicultural group of attractive smiling young people, stand proud in the sunshine, Coke bottle in hand, singing about wanting to buy the world a Coke.

Hot coffee, whiskey and cream sounds right for a chilly day in the arrivals lounge, but a happy-clappy ad for the ultimate American brand seems a stretch.

But in early 1971, famed New York advertising copywriter Bill Backer from McCann Erickson was on his way to London to meet musical director Billy Davis and songwriters Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway to discuss a new jingle for America’s biggest brand Coca-Cola. The duo were pop hit-makers for the likes of Andy Williams, Gene Pitney and Cilla Black.

Adman

But the adman’s trip was interrupted when fog descended on London and the aircraft was forced to land in Shannon where passengers had to overnight. Arriving back in the airport the following morning, grumpy and out of sorts and hoping that London was finally open, Backer, as he recounts it in his biography

The Care and Feeding of Ideas

, had his lightbulb moment.

In front of him in the bar were groups of people, nearly all of them as he remembers it, drinking Coke.

“People of all races and colour started laughing and joking over their Cokes, and it made me realise how Coke served a social purpose, making them bond.”

Catchy

When he got to London he talked through the happy scene with Davis, who wasn’t initially as charmed by the concept, saying that if he could buy everyone in the world something to make their lives better it wouldn’t be a Coke, it would be a home. The catchy bits about “furnishing it with love, growing apple trees and honey bees” came later as the son

g

I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)

came together.

Backer and Davis adapted it as a radio commercial with the line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” but that ad didn’t take off. Ever the visionary creative, Backer, still invested in the idea, and devising a TV campaign for the brand, had the Hilltop vision – a multicultural bonding of young people over a Coca-Cola in a location more exotic than the bar in Shannon airport. Pity though the stopover in Limerick hadn’t been a bit longer and he had time to discover the Cliffs of Moher because when it came to filming, they were unlucky with locations. The first shoot on the Cliffs of Dover was a washout, and the second attempt in the countryside outside Rome was also rained off. By then the budget – initially $100,000 – had been blown and the final cost hovered around $250,000. The crew tried again in Rome on a sunnier day and got their shots. Some weeks after its first airing, the song sung by The New Seekers became a massive worldwide hit, selling one million copies in the UK alone.

‘Mad Men’

McCann Erickson was, incidentally, known at the time Hilltop was made as a Catholic, Irish agency. In

Mad Men

, the AMC drama created by Matthew Weiner about life on Madison Avenue, when Don Draper’s small agency is taken over by industry behemoth McCann Erickson, Roger Sterling (played by Irish American John Slattery) quips after meeting some of his new co-workers, that they “put the Mick in McCann”. And as if the message isn’t hammered home enough account executive Ken Cosgrove, Wasp to his fingertips despite his Irish-sounding name, calls his new co-workers “Black Irish thugs”.

TV drama

Hilltop was catapulted again back into popular culture last week when Weiner chose it as the final shot in his golden age of TV drama touchstone,

Mad Men

. After 92 episodes we saw Don Draper, McCann Erickson copywriter, sitting cross-legged in an ashram on a cliffside in California surrounded by mediating young hippies, gorgeous young people, radiating happiness. A smile crosses his face and

Mad Men

cuts to the Hilltop ad, fiction meeting fact, or one fiction following another, depending how you see it. And a long way from a wintery Shannon Airport in 1971.