Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

The reporters were wowed. They watched lush stop-motion animation based on Thomas Hart Benton’s Heartland, with farmers plowing golden wheat fields to a score out of Aaron Copland. They saw a Dick Donner spaceship comedy with a big payoff. (To catch an alien impostor, the captain quizzes his crew about the world’s most popular soft drink.) We had a takeoff on Rene Magritte’s surrealist Golconda with Coke bottles dropping from the sky, and a haunting urban night scene out of Edward Hopper. From the erotic glassblower to an all-percussion spot with the Blue Man Group, our ads were wildly eclectic. But the final image for each commercial—backed by the “Always” jingle—was Coke’s “button,” a red bottle cap with the century-old trademark in white cursive. Peter Sealey told us the polar bears clinched it, and the press conference became a love fest. Journalists like to be entertained, too.