How Coke’s ‘For Everyone’ Reimagined an Icon, One Bubble at a Time

When something looks simple, clean, and effortless on screen, it usually means that a beast of work went on behind the scenes. Coca-Cola’s ‘For Everyone’ film is a perfect example of that hypothesis; a minimalist and seamless spot belies the intense creative accomplishments on set.

Keith Cartwright, creative lead and CCO at LA-based creative agency Cartwright, says the idea grew out of conversations with Coca-Cola’s CMO about how to reimagine one of the brand’s ‘Hall of Fame’ pieces.

The 1971 ‘Hilltop’ ad, ‘Coca-Cola for Everyone’ (featured above), with its message of shared humanity, has become a permanent reference point in the brand’s history. “So I said, ‘How do we modernise this without taking away from the core and its simplicity?’” Keith explains.

The solution was to build a mosaic of small stories – over 100 vignettes were drafted, each of them representing “either a mindset or a lifestyle. All based on humanity,” says Keith. The intention was to hold a mirror up to people, rather than the brand itself. “Instead of you seeing us, we have to demonstrate that we see you as an audience, as a consumer, and as a society.”

The campaign carried with it the same universal promise as the original but told through today’s lens.

The speed of production meant every decision counted; from brief to broadcast, the film was completed in roughly nine weeks. Urgency carried them through conception, shooting, and the editing process, which Keith describes as both painstaking and emotional, but very worth it.

Drinks photographer and director Martin Wonnacott of cake-factory known for his precision and product expertise, was brought in to shoot the spot. “We went to his studio for a few days, and we had every shape, size, and dimension of Coke bottles and cans. We built it. It was a lot of fun – very hard, but a lot of fun,” says Keith.

For Martin, “The fun aspect was to be able to shoot from a script essentially as if the products were people. Each vignette had a character to imagine, so I used that in how we approached the setups. Some lent themselves to be static, locked shots, while others felt more natural with a subtle move,” he tells me. But above all else, he “wanted the viewer to really feel each shot.”

That meant stripping the execution right back to its essentials. “The simplicity of the visual tied with the emotion we wanted to convey without being overly fussy. Simplicity executed perfectly was key,” he explains. Impressively, everything was done practically in camera, without aftereffects. The most demanding sequence was a group shot at the end, with 14 products fizzing and dripping as the camera wound through in a single take.

Keith stresses that none of this would have been possible without the foundation of trust between the agency and the client. “They have to trust us, and we have to trust them.” And that they did. That same trust extended to adapting the hero films for different markets. Two English and two Spanish versions were produced, with local creative partners rewriting lines to align with cultures, “We had to rely on them to give us the same nuance that we applied to the English version…Both have to make sense to the country, or it doesn’t work,” says Keith.

Martin tells me the collaboration was seamless: “We had a really good flow of ideas and suggestions each step of the way.” And the final film is resonating far beyond its modest setups. Within its first four weeks, it had racked up over 27 million YouTube views. At the time of writing, that view count sits at 35 million. “That’s the power of Coca-Cola,” says Martin.

Keith agrees that what matters most is the sense of humanity at the campaign's core. “A brand is a promise, so what promise are we making when we create a film like this? That promise has to be consistent with other promises they have made over the course of so many years.

“Every once in a while, the best clients I have ever worked with have the instinct to say, ‘Let’s try something’.”

And sometimes, as with ‘For Everyone’, we get to see it pay off.