A multigenerational family is seated around a formal Thanksgiving table. The room and its occupants are bored and are all wearing beige. The host walks in the dining room and sets down three cranberry jellies on a platter. Then an original dance track begins, with a low-voiced command to “wiggle.”

The beat drops, the jellies wiggle and jiggle and the guests imitate them. As the song builds, so does the intensity of the jelly wiggle, and the responsive movement from all the family members. We end with the family erupting in joyful chaos because of the cranberry jelly. Then, a hard cut to a product portfolio end card with the campaign line: POWER YOUR HOLIDAYS.

As part of our foundational brand work with Ocean Spray, we had repositioned them from a juice company to a cranberry company, showing cranberries as an essential source of disruptive power and flavor.

Thanksgiving is a big moment for the brand culturally, and the most crucial time of year for the company’s sales.

And the brand was losing ground with millennials, right as millennials were taking over holiday hosting duties in their extended families. We needed to make the brand relevant with this audience and lift sales during this critical time of year.

We chose to do it with the product that made Ocean Spray famous 90+ years ago: the canned cranberry jelly, which many people viewed as a vestige of a different time and an antiquated way of eating.

POWER YOUR HOLIDAYS :60

A seated holiday dinner is taking place in a formal dining room. Everything is beige. From the mashed potatoes to the colorless wallpaper. Everyone eats in silence.

A family member enters the dining room from the kitchen, holding a platter of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce logs.

The family stares at this person as they set the platter of jellies down on the center of the table.

The plate of jellies begins to move, and the music begins. The slack-faced family members watch the jellies intently. One by one, they start to slowly move like the jellies. A little wobble here, a little wiggle there.

The song picks up. The jellies start to move faster, more wildly. So do the family members; they’re now completely overcome with the wobbles.

The party is in full effect. More Ocean Spray products join the party. A guest picks up a glass of Cranberry Juice Cocktail. They feel the power as they grab it. They can barely get the glass to their mouth because they’re moving so wildly.

We end on a fever pitch; the wobbly dance party chaos never ends.

Cut to the end card where we see a red, holiday array of Ocean Spray products.

TITLE: Power your holidays.

LOGO UP: OCEAN SPRAY

Cranberry jelly has been an American Thanksgiving staple for over 90 years. It’s a jellied fruit product that comes in a can. When you remove it from the can, the cranberry jelly retains the ridged shape of its container. It’s both a beloved tradition and a commonly-mocked food at the American Thanksgiving table.

It’s strange and unnatural-looking. It’s also delightfully bright red, sweet and tart. It goes great as a side to the traditional meal of roasted turkey and mashed potatoes.

Millennial consumers, who we needed to recruit, have been raised on more natural foods than previous generations and are suspicious of anything in a can. That makes canned cranberry jelly a difficult sell for them.

This generation is also in the process of creating their own meaningful holiday traditions, so selling the jelly as something traditionally important would not be effective with this audience.