10 Commercials That Changed Pop Culture Forever

2. Coca-Cola - "I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke..."

Ah, the 1970s. From the vantage point we have four decades later, we can see how cheesy the decade was, and it seems like we love it for being that way. From the success of movies like Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy to the constant shellacking of '70s pop music, we can always derive pleasure from making fun of the syrupy-sweet ideals of the styles and pop culture that came from the bell-bottom era. This ad encapsulates what we love to mock about the decade more than any other commercial of the era, while also showing us that, in the 1970s, even mega-corporations like Coca-Cola got involved in the struggle for peace. The advertisement is simple: we watch as a choir of teenagers of different nationalities gather on a hill and sing, clutching bottles of Coke as they do so. The song, titled "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing," tells us about the choir's desire to promote world peace through pop music serenades and drinking copious amounts of Coca-Cola. The camera cranes up to give us a bird's-eye view of the group as text scrolls across the screen, telling us about how Coca-Cola spent a fortune to recruit teenage singers from around the world and send them to Italy to croon about soda and turtledoves. The song is sugary-sweet to the point of being tooth-rotting and there's a cult-like quality to the choir that gives the ad a weird vibe, but the ad draws the viewer in, regardless. The tune gets stuck in your head and it really does leave you wanting a Coke. In that way, the commercial achieved its purpose; it may not have brought us to Nirvana, but it kept Coca-Cola in the black.