It turns out the 1971 Coke ad that aired during the Mad Men finale was supposed to be written by protagonist Don Draper.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, show creator Matthew Weiner said that the ad the episode cuts to during the show’s final minutes, a Coca-Cola “Hilltop” commercial,” suggests Draper’s return to McCann-Erickson.
“I have never been clear, and I have always been able to live with ambiguities,” Weiner said. “In the abstract, I did think, why not end this show with the greatest commercial ever made?”
Coca-Cola, meanwhile, has a huge budget to push its products around the world these days. As Adweek reported at the end of last year, the company enjoyed an ad budget of over $3 billion for 2013, with plans to increase that by another billion in the coming years. Its popular “Share a Coke Campaign” ended up helping the company boost sales for the first time in 10 years.
Seiner also said the advertisement shouldn’t be read with cynicism. “I did hear rumblings of people talking about the ad being corny. It’s a little bit disturbing to me, that cynicism,” he said. “I’m not saying advertising’s not corny, but I’m saying that the people who find that ad corny, they’re probably experiencing a lot of life that way, and they’re missing out on something.”