Hasta La Motion!

Coca Cola advertising during the 2015 Super Bowl was focused on making the internet happier. During the second quarter of the game, Coca-Cola premiered a 60-second advertisement titled “#MakeItHappy.” The ad featured a unique spin on the importance of creating more positivity on the World Wide Web, highlighting inspiring moments of optimism in the face of online negativity. Through the ad, Coca-Cola asked people to stand together in support of one of its core values: spreading happiness.

The spot opens with a student being mocked on video by classmates, negative comments being read on social media, and terse words and reactions shared from behind a screen. The scenes gave way to an Internet server room, where a precariously placed bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola spilled into the mainframe, sending a massive liquid glitch that spreads happiness into the neighborhoods and cityscapes outside. Set to the song “Show Me Love” by Hundred Waters, the spot followed the happiness glitch as it entered routers, laptops and mobile phones, turning messages of negativity to ones of uplift and positivity. “Internet can be used to spread either happiness or hate. To either hurt someone or make someone’s day. At the end of the day, it’s whatever we make it. Let’s #MakeItHappy. Find out how you can make the Internet happier at GoMakeItHappy.com“.

Along with the 60-second commercial, Coca-Cola is encouraging people to upload happiness to the places that need it most. On Twitter, users can change hurtful messages into something happier by replying to a negative tweet with the hashtag #MakeItHappy. When they do, positivity unfolds as the original tweet is transformed into ASCII art. On Instagram users can join the “Smile Petition” by posting a photo of themselves smiling while making a hashtag hand sign and including “#MakeItHappy” in the caption. A digital spill, timed to begin as the ad concludes in broadcast, spread through the Internet via mobile and other digital devices, prompting people around the country to visit GoMakeItHappy.com.

“Many of us have seen or felt the effects of online negativity, and it’s a concern that only continues to grow within society,” said Andy McMillin, VP and GM, Coca-Cola Trademark Brands. “Advertising during the Big Game broadcast offers a huge opportunity to drive awareness around the topic and, more important, to encourage people to be more positive in their online actions.”

“We can’t solve negativity on the Internet, but we can use the world’s biggest advertising stage to ask people to think twice before posting negative messages and images,” said Jennifer Healan, Coca-Cola’s group director of integrated marketing content. “We hoped to inspire Americans to help make the Internet a more inclusive, happier place.”

A short video, “Empowerment,” provides some of the thinking behind the Make It Happy campaign.

Coca-Cola released teasers and vignettes on YouTube in the lead up to the Super Bowl, shining a light on the negativity many experience across the Internet and the Company’s belief in the growing need for positive, uplifting change online and on social media. Messages are delivered by race car driver Danica Patrick, football player Michael Sam, Teen Change Agents and Kid President.

Together, DoSomething.org and Coca-Cola are mobilizing DoSomething.org’s community of over 3-million young people to help spread the importance of Coca-Cola’s message to help make the internet a happier place.

Credits

The Coca Cola Make It Happy campaign was developed at Wieden+Kennedy Portland by creative directors Hal Curtis, Antony Goldstein and Jeff Gillette, copywriter Sally DeSipio, strategic planners Nicole Brandell and Deb Williams, account team Thomas Harvey and Adelaide Smythe, business affairs director Amber Lavender, executive creative directors Joe Staples and Mark Fittzloff, and head of production Ben Grylewicz.

W+K strategic planner Nicole Brandell tried out the #MakeItHappy effect on a not-so-positive tweet from Adweek suggesting this wasn’t Coca Cola’s best work…