Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

Our challenge was to restore Coke’s cachet with young people, but first we needed to get and hold their attention. Infrared TV remotes had invaded the American household. Viewers clicked to a new channel when ads came on, or went to the kitchen or the bathroom. My kids ran off to another room to play. So Coke’s commercials had to tell stories the way movies did, only much faster. They needed to entertain. Advertising wasn’t subatomic physics. Make commercials fun to watch and viewers would embrace them. From there I worked back inductively. Ad campaigns had three essential components: raw ideas, creative types to develop them, and technicians to produce the finished spots. The first two were CAA’s stock in trade and the third could be hired by the job. While outsourcing was frowned upon by ad execs (who raked in extra revenue by keeping everything in-house), film studios often outsourced their trailers. Why couldn’t Coke do the same? Ads were expensive because Madison Avenue bankrolled its own commercial houses and then marked up each fee by as much as 18 percent. CAA could undercut them by going straight to the talent. Our directors worked on big, draining movie projects. Many of them would jump at the chance to make a miniature film with total freedom for a six-figure paycheck. I grabbed a legal tablet and jotted down our manifesto: Holiday relay race. More commercials. Demographically stimulated. No “one sight, one sound.” New music, new graphics. Hire creative people.