Coke. Over The Hill?

In 1971 Linda Neery gazed earnestly out of America's television sets and sang  "I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love..." Sixty seconds later, when the helicopter shot pulled back to show "young people from all over the world on a hilltop in Italy,"   Coke  had  a new masterpiece.

Since then Coke has done at least three remakes of the classic "Hilltop" spot. We've never seen the Brazilian one, so we can't comment on it. But the two that ran in the U.S. were pale – and unsuccessful – imitations of the original.  What made the first spot so powerful? And why were the remakes so lame?

• The commercial was exquisitely conceived and produced. It had an all-star creative team.  The $250,000 budget was huge  in 1971.
   

• The commercial was refreshingly original. While most commercials
  of the time droned on incessantly about product, "Hilltop" focused on
  user feelings. It moved up the Maslow pyramid to  "Love/Belonging."
   

• "Hilltop" was emotionally perfect for teens and tweens in America in 1971, as the Vietnam war was careening to an end. It was an expression of aspirations for peace, brotherhood and universality, without the controversial overtones of protest. You just felt good about the spot.
   

• The spot capitalized on Coke's iconic stature. Coca-Cola really was "The Real Thing," perceived in the U.S. as a universal brand and a universal bond. Back then, a lot of kids in Coke's target audience felt the world could come together, and that Coke could be a catalyst or expression of that coalescing.

Since then Coke has tried to recapture the magic of "Hilltop" at least three times.

• In 1989, Coca-Cola revisited the same hilltop in a spot featuring children of some of the original "young people from all over the world." The commercial got a tepid reaction, in part, perhaps, because Coke's teen and tween target audience had not even been born when the original "Hilltop" aired, so they didn't feel nostalgia for the concept.  They probably had never seen the original.
   

• There was a Brazilian remake a few years back, but we've never seen it, so we can't comment.
   

• "Chilltop," the 2005 sequel-to-the-sequel in the U.S., (the one set on top of a building in Philadelphia) got no reaction at all. The spot disappeared without a trace. We've tried to find it on the internet, with no success.  Presumably Coke, singer G. Love and the agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, are embarrassed by the clumsy attempt to rip off a masterpiece. 
   

• There is also a new commercial that calculates  what it would cost to buy the world a Coke, which assumes that the audience is familiar with the spot from 1971.

Why does Coke keep remaking "Hilltop" over and over?  Maybe it's a new definition of insanity: doing what you did in the past and expecting to get the same results you used to get--despite the fact that the world has changed dramatically.

Everything says the world is definitely changing for Coca-Cola.

• Coke is still number one in Interbrand's ranking of brand value but, according to Forbes, the value of the Coke brand has declined 4% per year for the last four years.
   

• With a market capitalization of almost $100 billion and Berkshire Hathaway a major investor, Coke is obviously a very blue chip. But the stock is down 14% over the last five years, and Warren Buffett has opted off the board of directors.
   

• The unwieldy structure of more than a thousand U.S. bottlers has been whittled down to fewer than a hundred (good).  But a bunch of those are suing Coke (not so good).
   

• Coke sells 1.3 billion servings every day.  However, U.S. sales of Coca-Cola Classic have gone down 10% over the last five years. And now all carbonated beverages are headed south.
   

• Soft drinks are scheduled to be banished from elementary and middle schools starting in 2008.
   

• Coke has had four marketing chiefs and a bunch of  agencies in the last four years. No wonder the commercials were "painful to watch" according to a marketing professor quoted in The Wall Street Journal.
   

• It's no longer possible to talk at teens and tweens as a large captive audience. There are hundreds of TV channels and TiVo (Coke's target audience isn't watching much TV now anyway), plus video games, web surfing, chat groups, facepages, blogs, iPods, cell/picture/text messaging phones and multi-hyphenated lifestyles (like vegan- snowboarder-gangsta-Unitarian tweens).

Coke's top management apparently remembers how things were back in the seventies and think that if they can just return to those simpler times everything will be fine. The Wall Street Journal reports that Coke's CEO Neville Isdell "has vowed to return Coca-Cola to its former marketing glory, starting with a new 'iconic' ad campaign."

But the original "Hilltop" didn't make Coca-Cola an icon. It capitalized on the iconic status Coke had at the time. Coke's not an icon anymore, and trying to regain that status with one more remake of "Hilltop" (or anything else "iconic") isn't going to work.

• No TV spot alone will fix the problem. Because kids today aren't likely to see it.
   

• The answer certainly isn't a warm reaffirming message of inclusion and universal love. Like every other market today, kids are fragmented, sub-fragmented and re-sub-fragmented. Most have a high level of cynicism and a low gag threshold.
   

• A cheesy rehashing of a past glory the kids themselves never experienced definitely won't do the job. Coke cares about its heritage. Today's teens and tweens don't.

It may well be that nothing Coke's traditionalist executives and directors will approve can get the job done. According to The Wall Street Journal, they are "determined to preserve the icon, which is steeped in Santa Claus and Norman Rockwell-style Americana."

Norman Rockwell? To communicate with today's teens and tweens? Heaven help Coke.

The new commercials from Wieden + Kennedy are nice. 26% of respondents in the Ad Track survey like them a lot and think they are very effective. That's an increase of 5 percentage points over the norm. But "nice" and an incremental  improvement won't get the job done.

When the commercials try to "sell happiness in a bottle, the Coke Side of Life beats the credibility -- and charm -- all to death," according to Advertising Age ad critic Bob Garfield.

Could anything make Coke king of the hill again?  Sure:

Stop looking to the past for answers that can only be found 180° in the other direction--in the future. That rearward-looking perspective cut General Motors' U.S. market share in half. It could do the same to Coke.

Although the formulas for success in the past are now formulas for disaster, the principles haven't changed. Apply them in today's environment:

1. Go first class. Although what first class means will vary drastically in new media. Monks in scriptoriums probably dissed the dullness of books printed with movable type. Your favorite commercial director thinks flash animation is childish. Get over it.
   Illuminated manuscripts are--and 35mm commercials will soon be--past tense.
    

2. Be original. Don't copy anyone.  Not even yourself.
    

3. Use the medium (or more likely, media) most meaningful to your target audience right now.
    

4. Get out of your own heads and back into the heads of your target audience.

None of that stuff will happen on a hilltop in Italy. It can, however happen in the minds and on the Macs of people determined to communicate effectively, not traditionally.

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