Posted on 05/17/2016 3:01:12 PM PDT by Cecily
Bill Backer, a lapsed lyricist whose classic 1971 commercial taught a fractious world of potential Coca-Cola consumers to sing in perfect harmony and was featured in the finale of “Mad Men,” died on Friday in Warrenton, Va. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his wife and only immediate survivor, the former Ann Mudge.
Mr. Backer and his team immortalized jingles and slogans that proclaimed “Things go better with Coke” and defined the soft drink as “the real thing”; declared that Miller Lite was “everything you ever wanted in a beer… and less”; elevated the Campbell’s brand by asserting that “soup is good food”; and allowed that “little girls have pretty curls, but I like Oreo.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Coke exec was right....sappy as hell
Mad Men was a great show and would have been perfect if they cut out all those love scenes calculated to draw the women in. As a period piece, it was a very accurate representation of how business was done in the 1960s.
The photo of the guy at the website reminds me of Hubert Humphrey somewhat.
Is it horrible that I was able to sing the Oreo commercial just now? How many years has it been...?
The way the show ended was perfect.
“Love” scenes? More like cheesy sex scenes. I could have lived without those too.
RIP.
I'm a woman and the love scenes, frankly, were my least favorite part of the show ... well, except for the frat boy "humor" that was and is profoundly not funny. Men who behave like Draper are a turnoff to me. A taker and not a giver of himself.
Other than that, his character and the show are fabulous.
It was hokey... and very successful.
Draper had a certain humanity to him, there were plenty of times he helped those he saw as being down on their luck, because of his own experience, he could related to them. But what a lot of people miss about Draper, was that he never stopped being a “Hobo”, even when he was at the top of the Ad world.
But my favorite character on the show was Roger. My all-time favorite scene was when he fired Burt Peterson for the second time.
Is it horrible that I was able to sing the Oreo commercial just now?
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If it is, I’m horrible too.
Yes, he did, like when he defended Freddie. But his looking at women as just a warm place to put it was offputting.
Don had respect for various women - such as Anna Draper, her niece Stephanie, Rachel Menken, Peggy Olson as time went on, and Joan Harris.
And there’s something wrong with that?
Obviously lots of people liked it. Or it wouldn’t be remembered, even, 40 years later.
For me, it is one of those songs that evokes a crystal clear memory of a specific time, a Christmas break at my parents house during college years, when it played on TV often. The Hillside Singers version was 1972.
That reminds me. One of Walt Disney’s daughters once complained that what the studio did was “corny”. His response: “Lots and lots of people eat corn, my dear!”
CC
That and a crying Indian defined by wonder years.
RIP
I liked his final scene with Betty, “Knock ‘em dead, Birdy!” Little did we know at the time how ironic that would be.
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