MullenLowe and Aggressive Bottle Sunshine in Corona Beer Animated Ad

MullenLowe Los Angeles and creative studio Aggressive have teamed up for Corona® beer’s first ever animated campaign, marrying 2D illustration and tabletop footage. The spots, which exude sunshine, run across socials and are accompanied by a live action TVC, launching at the same time.

MullenLowe brought directors Alex Topaller and Dan Shapiro of Aggressive onto the campaign with the brief to craft the Corona brand’s debut animation style for a series of sun-soaked scenarios nodding to its Mexican heritage: 'Más Familia', 'Más Nights In', 'Más BBQ', 'Más Hangouts'. Bathed in an orange glow beneath a bright blue sky, the spots showcase hand drawn-style illustrations as 2D characters socialise to a bouncing Latin beat.

Pairing illustration with high tech tabletop, the campaign also features glossy footage of bottles and cans swinging past the lens, glistening with condensation, and juicy lime wedges diving into a golden pool of bubbles. Working with such natural elements was time intensive, requiring repeated experimentation to capture the perfect splash or spritz, followed by numerous iterations to progressively film the liquid, the droplets, and the spray.

Aggressive utilised motion control Bolt arms and high speed Phantom cameras to place these product visuals in the hands of the animated characters, each movement well thought through to make sense within the context of an organic, lively setting. To film the products as if held by someone dancing, the director duo trialled various interesting camera moves that could be animated into someone’s grasp, in a way that makes the character feel alive while spotlighting the beer as deliciously as possible.

Collaborating with Aggressive, product styling engineers DragonFly crafted several bespoke contraptions and props, achieving all effects in camera: to pop off the caps, a system of glass straws fired gas through the bottles; the shots flying into the labels were filmed with a giant, three-foot oversized bottle.

The finishing touch came from suffusing each scene with a summer vibe to harness a feeling of capturing sunshine in a bottle. Aggressive and cinematographer Etienne Proulx manipulated each light ray to act like sunlight glinting through liquid. In composite, this was merged with the 2D illustrated world by making sure that the animated characters’ hands are diffracted the right way through the glass, filmed footage meeting animation on one plane.

Aggressive comment: “It was an exciting challenge for us to come up with the Corona brand’s first ever animation style to align with the brand and its Latin heritage - we went through a lot of explorations to arrive at what we have now. Projects like this, which combine different mediums, technologies, and techniques, are what we really thrive on, and it's very cool to see the various elements work in unison, from the lights, to the popping caps, to movement of the robotic arm. Quite a lot of engineering went into it.”