The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2019–2020
Coca-Cola's 'Hear This Ad' stills make viewers hear the sound of opening a Coke
DAVID Miami shot macro close-ups of a bottle uncapping and a can snapping open, betting that sensorial memory would make viewers hear the images.
The Coca-Cola Company
What it had to solve
Coca-Cola, at 126 years old, wanted to remind people it is still iconic — not through new claims, but by showing that the refreshing ritual already lives in their own senses.
How it works
Coca-Cola had spent 126 years building an archive of sensory rituals — the hiss of a cap, the crack of a can, the fizz of a pour — so DAVID Miami asked what advertising would look like if it used only those memories. The answer was 'Hear This Ad': macro photographs with nothing moving and nothing playing, designed to be impossible to look at silently.
The creative team photographed close-ups of a bottle being uncapped, a can being snapped open and a glass filling with bubbles, then challenged viewers to hear the sounds in their heads. Because the rituals are so deeply encoded, the image reliably produces the sound — and with it the anticipation of taste — through the involuntary crossing of senses known as synaesthesia.
The work needed no product explanation because the product was already inside the audience. Cannes Lions 2019 gave it a Gold in Print & Publishing with further Outdoor and Design wins, and the D&AD jury summed up the transfer neatly: the ad made a viewer thirsty, and that was all it had to do.
Why it lands
- The brand's sounds are already stored in decades of shared memory, so the ad only had to point at them.
- A silent image that makes you hear something creates participation — the viewer finishes the ad themselves.
- Macro photography turned a commodity moment into an iconic, product-led visual with no need for words.
- Tapping taste through sound showed how one sense can sell through another.
What it did
The campaign took a Gold Lion in Print & Publishing at Cannes 2019 plus additional Outdoor and Design awards, and DAVID described it as the first audible visual campaign; a D&AD jury member said the work made them thirsty, which was all it needed to do.
What you can take
Use what the audience already carries: when a brand's sensory rituals live in memory, a still image that triggers them can out-advertise any new claim.
Since then
The campaign traveled from print into outdoor and social iterations under the banner 'Try Not to Hear This' and was archived by D&AD, where the jury praised its economy. It became a frequently cited example of sensory branding — proof that a mature brand's most valuable creative asset can be the rituals already living in its customers' heads.
Sources
- Ogilvy Celebrates Second Consecutive Day of Wins at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
- Cannes Lions 2019: Ogilvy Celebrates Winning Streak as it Closes the Second Awards Night
- Try Not to Hear This | D&AD Awards Archive
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