A multi-generational 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.

We had a very small budget and a very large task: make Ocean Spray famous and relevant for the 2022 holiday season.

The script for the film was always quite simple, as summarized above. But doing this simple idea well was our biggest challenge.

We partnered with our director to bring this idea to life. Due to budget, we took a chance on casting non-union actors, and shooting everything in one twelve-hour day in Toronto.

With careful resource management, we were able to cut a :60, :30, :15, three :06s for TV, OLV and social. We were also able to make a custom music track, a landing page, wild postings across NYC, as well as a ten-hour-long "yule log" video where the platter of cranberry jellies wiggle in front of the fire atop the sound of crackling flames.

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.