Brave Uses AI and Unreal Engine to Bring a Juicy, Colourful World to Life for Naked Smoothies

Reimagining the role the brand can play in consumers’ lives, Naked’s latest campaign ‘Live Colourful’ is all about breaking free from the grey, monotony of the daily grind, and putting the spark back in the day. 

To bring ‘Live Colourful’ to life, Brave worked with Not Just Any and director, Ayla Spaans, and created a truly original vibrant fruity world using AI and Unreal Engine. These tools meant they could fully immerse themselves in creating something so juicy, colourful and fresh, and show the audience the most important qualities they’re looking for in a super smoothie, in a way that felt not only distinctive, but also delicious and desirable.   

The film, set to Mtume’s hit, ‘Juicy Fruit’, sees the ad’s hero fly through the fruit world, before being snapped back to reality by the ringing of her phone. Instead of answering with her usual greeting, she does something a little more ‘colourful’. 

Paul Pearson, creative director at Brave, commented: “There’s a lot of scary things being said about AI at the moment, but if brands such as Naked can use it as a base to create original worlds that we can build on with the help of imaginative minds - such as Ayla’s - and incredible gaming engines - such as Unreal - then I’m all for it.”

Aidan Gibbons, executive creative director at Not Just Any continued: “This project was quite challenging, not only because of the timeframe but also the creative concept - nobody on our team could even find a single reference for what 'fruity world in the sky' might look like (have a go yourself!) So, we used Midjourney and fed it image prompts (of rainbows etc) and then a lot of photoshop/collages to transform the script was suddenly something everyone could 'see' as a real thing. We then also used Unreal Engine 5 to rapidly test and prototype what each shot background would look like. The results were so good that we used UE5 to render each shot, and then used 'traditional' compositing and keying blue screen to put the protagonist into each scene. All of those processes, combined with Ayla's amazing casting, art direction and vision really brought the whole commercial together in time on and on budget.”

Ayla Spaans, director, commented: “It was an amazing experience to think about creating a world from scratch. I wanted to create a dreamy world with an endless sunset that invites you to fly through it. The soft colours of the sunset were important for the whimsical world and to let the fruit stand out. That we could use the samples from the iconic song “juicy” from Mtume felt like a big win too!”

Charlotte Ashburner, Tropicana Brands Group, commented: “Naked smoothies are a burst of colour and energy for your mind and body, taking you away (if only for a moment) from the grey, monotony of the daily grind; putting that spark back into your day. Brave’s concept for our latest campaign ‘Live Colourful’, working with AI and Unreal Engine, truly brought Brave’s and Ayla’s vision for Naked’s fruity and colourful world beautifully to life.”