Global Marketing and the New Hollywood: The Making of the ‘Always Coca-Cola’ Campaign

Abstract

In 1992, the globally distributed soft drink maker Coca-Cola jettisoned its long-time advertising strategy of ‘one sight, one sound, one sell’. Looking to tap into the American youth culture Zeitgeist and shore up its market among youth worldwide, Coca-Cola hired a Hollywood talent agency, Creative Artists Agency, because it would provide an ‘enormous resource to popular culture’. CAA shaped the initial ‘Always Coca-Cola’ campaign as a diverse array of images ‘style-sorted’ in order to attract and retain remote control-wielding audiences. Despite advertising industry concerns that a talent agency was encroaching on its turf, Coca-Cola continues to pursue the CAA-originated strategy of diverse, clever, high-concept advertising (now managed by former CAA staff members) in order to stay relevant to American youth culture and its international variants.