Do you remember this Pepsi jingle? Because this one was designed to do a lot more than sell you a bottle of soda.
This 1970 commercial, called “Portrait of America,” was part of Pepsi’s “You’ve Got a Lot to Live, and Pepsi’s Got a Lot to Give” campaign. Watching it again, what strikes me is how little time they spend actually selling Pepsi. Instead we see racing, boats, city streets, beaches, children, couples and ordinary Americans simply living their lives.
And then there’s that song.
The music was written by Joseph Brooks, who years later wrote “You Light Up My Life.” Pepsi described the sound as “gospel rock” or “jubilation rock,” with a big communal chorus meant to sound hopeful and uplifting. It reportedly grew out of a protest song Brooks had written before being reshaped into the Pepsi theme.
That makes a lot more sense when you remember what America felt like around 1970. BBDO realized that the carefree “beautiful young people doing beautiful things” advertising of the earlier Pepsi Generation no longer completely reflected a country watching war and social unrest every night on television. Their new goal was to be real and involving, even searching the country for real people doing real things.
Maybe that’s why this jingle stuck. It didn’t tell us Pepsi tasted better. It told us we had a lot to live for.
Do you remember hearing this one on television?
