legendary King of Pop starred in his first Pepsi campaign alongside his brothers in 1983, as part of the Pepsi ‘New Generation’ campaign followed by Pepsi’s sponsorship of the epic BAD Tour and the iconic Pepsi “Chase” commercials which served as the impetus for the current reunion. Pepsi sought to celebrate the long-standing relationship between Pepsi and Michael Jackson to support the BAD25 album release by developing a tribute TV spot within their Live for Now campaign.

The heart of the work is about recontextualisation, the integration of existing imagery into a fresh palette that gives new power and meaning to it. The director visually remixed classic footage of Michael’s signature performances and energy, employing a new collage technique, where archival images of MJ become a framework to be inhabited by other archival MJ images in an iconic and kinetic collage. State-of-the-art technology was used to reinvent and translate this style into motion relying on frame-matching to convey a sense of continuous motion, as well as intricate collages where many images co-exist on a single canvas. The technique for this piece is a hybrid of both, a kinetic collage contained in the frame of Michael Jackson that becomes the unique language of this film. Shots were taken from Michael Jackons’ Moonwalker, The Chase, The Way You Make Me Feel, This is It, Smooth Criminal and Bad to make the final spot. Major difficulties arose when trying to track down original film, as this is the best medium to work with. PepsiCo., Directors, nor the Michael Jackson Estate were able to locate original film/prints, leaving us to work with 1” analogue, not ideal for this format.

The partnership with Katy Perry, Paramount Pictures and Pepsi garnered 627,692,354 in press impressions and positive coverage by mainstream media including MTV, Huffington Post, and CBS News to name a few. Live for Now and Katy were a natural fit together and because of it, the partnership reached thousands of serviceman during Fleet Week and over 51,000 fans through her live-streamed performance in LA. Today, we are working with the USO to still bring celebrate Fleet Week although the event has been cancelled due to federal budget cuts.