Executives from the Coca-Cola Company came to USC Tuesday to accept the 12th annual Cocky award. The Cocky award is given out every year by the Super Bowl Commercial class for what they think is the best Super Bowl commercial of that year.
The class judges the commercials on three categories: Likability, persuasiveness and brand identity. The commercial that receives the highest total score wins the Cocky award.
This year’s winning commercial was titled “Download Happiness.” The commercial also included the hashtag #MakeItHappy.
The ceremony first started out with an appearance from Cocky to hand out the awards to the Coca-Cola executives. Coke then showed a PowerPoint of all of the research and planning that goes into making a Super Bowl commercial.
The Coke executives started out by showing their favorite Super Bowl commercials that they were a part of. These commercials included Grand Theft Auto, polar bears and "America the Beautiful."
The presentation stated that Coke has always aimed to stand out in their commercials and make a cultural difference. This commercial had that same intent.
The Coke team first started their research for this year’s Super Bowl commercial in April 2014. Coke said they wanted to use teens as the subject because they are “the life blood of Coca-Cola.”
Coke then did research about what impacted teens every day. They came up with the World Wide Web.
Their final idea was to design a movement to make the World Wide Web happier, even if it was only for one moment. The idea came from their research that showed 44 percent of 18 to 29 year olds have been treated unkindly or attacked on the Internet.
The next part of their presentation showed the planning and release that went into the commercial. Coke did not prerelease their commercial like most companies do, but instead decided to release a teaser for the commercial.
Coke also released story extensions for their commercial using celebrities like Kid President and Michael Sam. These extensions allowed for the celebrities to tell their story and help with the Coke movement.
After the commercial aired, the hashtag #MakeItHappy was the third trending tweet on Twitter. The commercial was also the most talked about commercial of all the Super Bowl commercials in 2015.
The commercial was also in the top 10 in every ad poll in the U.S. After the Super Bowl, Coke launched a campaign to target the teen audience to empower them to make the Internet a happier place everyday.