A line of Coca-Cola trucks covered in lights rolls through a snowy town. The ad first aired in 1995, and for many viewers it is the moment Christmas begins. In the UK, its yearly return is often treated as the unofficial start of the season.
It was created by the agency W.B. Doner, and the trucks were known as “Christmas Caravans.” According to Coca-Cola, each of the three trucks in the original was 40 feet long and carried more than 30,000 bulbs, and special effects company Industrial Light & Magic helped light them. The ad’s music started as a short piano melody of four simple notes, which the team recorded as a temporary track and then kept.
The song later became a hit of its own: Melanie Thornton released “Wonderful Dream (Holidays Are Coming),” written in 2000 and released in November 2001. The ad itself has been refreshed and shown every holiday season for nearly three decades.
Its lesson is patience. Coca-Cola did not need a new idea each year, only a familiar one that people wanted to see again, and it turned an advertisement into a tradition.
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