Butterflies

Seven-Up, Seven-Up
we see the light
with Seven-Up

we couldn't have made it through the day
without something to show the way
that something keeps us going

and you can't make it through the night
if you don't have some kind of light 
that's glowing

Seven-Up, Seven-Up
we see the light
with Seven-Up

Abel and Kearns made their 7-Up "Bubbles" ad as employees of the J. Walter Thompson Agency of Chicago in 1974. For some, 1974 was the first year of the 1970s (if you believe that the 1960s ended in the U.S. in 1973, with Watergate).

Here is an ad made in the fifth year of the 1960s (if you believe the 1950s ended in 1963, with the assassination of America's 35th president):



Note that choice ("a car, a wardrobe, movie equipment, skiing in Chile..."), as a reflection of one's individuality, assumes opportunity (through consumption), which is not earned but rewarded randomly ("9, 079 great things"), and at terrible odds.

The 1970s "Bubbles" ad is a song that spans musical and visual styles, from the 1920s to the present. It reprises an even bigger number -- the good ol' Test of Time (continuity) -- as America licks its wounds (racial "tensions," the war in Vietnam, economic inflation, etc.) on the eve of its Bicentennial. The 1960s ad is neither a song nor a poem but an attitude reflective of a dispassionate intellectualism common to TV commentators -- thinkers and ideologues like Susan Sontag, William F. Buckley and Tom Wolfe (as brought to mind by the ad's white-suited host).

A few months back, 7-Up commissioned this numerically and philosophically Christian 3:16 minute "Butterfly Effect" ad for Chinese speakers:



I can't think of an ad that better reflects how the world is "wired" than this one.