Brian Stelter

Commercials for Coca-Cola are sometimes so completely shrouded by storytelling that viewers can make a game of brand-spotting. The game ?let?s call it Spot-the-Coke-can?takes a particularly long time during the cinematic spots in movie theatres.

In the global advertising campaign called Open Happiness that was introduced in January, the Coca-Cola Co has been taking the game to a logical last step: Omitting any reference to the brand in a catchy song it created and sold last winter.

With the title ?Open Happiness,? the song is an advertisement-by-association.

Coca-Cola signed a crew of well-known band members and performers to record the single. It also produced several local language versions for other countries. As is the case with the song, viewers of the video will be hard-pressed to spot the Coca-Cola branding. ?I studied the video like the Zapruder film,? said a Coke spokesman, Petro Kacur, and the Coke reference ?is so super-fast that you really have to be looking for it.?

Umut Ozaydinli, the global music marketing manager for the Coca-Cola Co, said the upbeat song pulled consumers into the Open Happiness campaign, rather than pushing it on them like traditional advertising. ?Coca-Cola is such a strong and magical brand that we can come out with something with no branding or very little branding,? he said adding, ?All the communications we are doing around the song enable consumers to connect the song with the brand.?

While Coca-Cola has produced songs in the past?before the Summer Olympics in Beijing last year, the company released eight song remixes by disc jockeys ??Open Happiness? stands out because the company is charging for the single on iTunes and Amazon.com.

For ?Open Happiness,? the company collaborated with Atlantic Records and signed Cee-Lo Green of Gnarls Barkley, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, Brendon Urie of Panic at the Disco, Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, and Janelle Monae to lend their voices to the song.

Monae, a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter, said it ?was promoting a good cause,? happiness, that all people could agree on.