The only thing more powerful than a Dr Pepper craving is CraveRider—a guy who rides a wave of Dr Pepper. To bring this visual idea to life on radio, we took our campaign’s theme song and gave it a bridge and multiple verses.

In this spot, a singer narrates the story of some friends hanging out at a movie theater and craving Dr Pepper. Suddenly, CraveRider shows up in the theater with some ice-cold Dr Pepper. The friends start to thank our hero when a woman shushes them; she’s trying to watch a movie! The singer comes back and ruins the movie, telling the woman that the movie is lame and the hero dies.

The singer uses this tale to remind listeners that even in the middle of a movie, CraveRider will always be there with Dr Pepper: The One You Crave.

Our CraveRider character rides a realistic wave of Dr Pepper. In VFX, liquid is notoriously difficult to recreate, and soda with its bubbles, foam and color, even more so. We worked with a team to develop the look of our wave. Unlike an actual watercraft in water, our wave had to move through living rooms and over picnic tables, dissipating and regenerating as CraveRider moved throughout the spot. The visual effects were created over three months – a process that included design and concept art, testing countless water simulations, rebuilding 3D elements of all the sets, and lighting and rendering multiple foam and light passes. Finally, we finished with painstaking compositing to bring our wave to life and ground our hero in the shots. The result is a 100% computer-animated realistic wave of Dr Pepper, a ground breaking and ground-soaking visual effect.