By Lloyd Metcalf

“I’d like to buy the world a home, and furnish it with love. Grow Apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves.”
https://youtu.be/2msbfN81Gm0

In 1971 the coca-cola company ran an ad that would set the tone for a generation of media advertisements and an attitude that would permeate media culture for years to come. They wanted to buy the world a coke and keep it company, they wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

What would this mean? What IF we could buy the world a home and furnish It wot hove? Buying the world a coke could be taken to mean “what if we could feed and provide sustenance” instead of “provide the world with our corporate fat American products of excess.”

After all, in 1971, the tone on the street was more about opposition to the Vietnam war, peace and love, than it was about corporate greed and domination (which was real on wall street and the newly discovered color TV world).

Lifted from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-hilltop-story is the following account:
Bill Backer, creative director on the Coca-Cola account for the McCann Erickson advertising agency, was flying to London to meet up with Billy Davis, the music director on the Coca-Cola account, to write radio commercials with two successful British songwriters, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, to be recorded by the New Seekers, a popular British singing group.

When he finally arrived in London, Backer told Billy Davis and Roger Cook what he had seen in the airport café. After he expressed his thoughts about buying everybody in the world a Coke, Backer noticed that Davis’s initial reaction was not at all what he’d expected and asked him, “Billy, do you have a problem with this idea?”
Davis slowly revealed his problem. “Well, if I could do something for everybody in the world, it would not be to buy them a Coke.”
Backer responded, “What would you do?”
“I’d buy everyone a home first and share with them in peace and love,” Davis said.
Backer said, “Okay, that sounds good. Let’s write that and I’ll show you how Coke fits right into the concept.”

The famous concept and ad campaign was born. What IF we could buy the world a home furnished with peace and love – and sustenance? Set aside that a giant corporation arranged this hill-side serenade in Italy to sell a product.

What would it mean to the world if every member of the planet had a home, food, hope, love and peace? It’s a utopian ideal, it’s the future set forth by Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenbery. If people of earth no longer concerned themselves with survival, religion, race or geography, what would the world look like?

Consider for a time if we “bought the world a coke and kept it company”. What would be possible with 7.2 billion minds focused on bringing peace love and prosperity to the human race as a whole? How would this sudden influx of peace and cooperation change our future as a species? Where would this sudden change lead us? What would it look like? How would the world change tomorrow?

Unified societal goals are possible, they have happened in the past, can they still happen in today’s world? Can you be part of it?

What if… is an editorial piece written to ask the question “What if…”. The intent is to ask the question, imagine the result, maybe spark the imagination and conversation.