Share

Prebiotic soda brand OLIPOP has unveiled a new campaign, “The Feel Good Soda,” created in partnership with creative agency Callen.

At the heart of the campaign is a hero film that brings OLIPOP’s feel-good positioning to life through a blend of live-action storytelling and colourful animation. Featuring a playful reimagining of The Chordettes’ classic hit Lollipop, updated with the lyric “Olipop, Olipop,” the spot introduces a cast of animated prebiotic characters that represent the positive impact of better-for-you soda.

Callen enlisted the visionary director Freddie Powell at Drool Productions who worked with lead animators Luca & Sinem at Not To Scale, with final compositing handled by Untold Studios.

Bringing the campaign to life required an unusually collaborative production process. With an accelerated timeline, live-action production, character development, animation and compositing all had to happen simultaneously rather than sequentially.

Olipop Soda – A Good Start

Credits
View on

Unlock full credits and more with a shots membership

Credits
View on
Show full credits
Hide full credits

Explore full credits, grab hi-res stills and more on shots Vault

Credits powered by

“We were developing characters and deciding on 2D designs while we were actually shooting the thing,” said Powell. “Normally it’s a relay race where one stage hands off to the next. On this job everything had to leave the starting blocks at once.”

“I was really keen to push the envelope and make Untold’s life as hard as possible,” Powell joked. “I wanted the camera moving constantly and I was obsessed with the cartoons dipping in and out of direct sunlight. Thankfully everyone involved was up for the challenge.”

Despite the technical complexity, Powell says the project reinforced what he loves most about animation. “It requires an unfathomable amount of trust and communication. You hand over your precious idea to artists and creators and they come back with something that makes your heart soar.”

Animators Luca & Sinem added: "The most challenging aspect of the project was managing the large number of characters appearing simultaneously in each scene. The goal was to create a vintage non serialised style, and having a choreographed action without making the animation feel repetitive. This required coordinating multiple animators working in parallel, often with limited time for feedback. In the live-action sequences, we also had to carefully balance the performances of the animated characters so they would complement the performance of the human actors.”

Share