I love a strange food commercial. A surreal idea, a joke you didn't see coming, an impossible camera move. Those are the ads people talk about.
But there's a trap. The idea gets so big that the food becomes a prop. The ad is memorable. Nobody wants to eat anything.
If someone watches your ad and remembers the talking cow but not the cheese, you paid for the cow.
Start with one eating moment
"Our product is delicious" is not a starting point. Everything is delicious in an ad.
A real starting point is a specific moment. Saturday breakfast when nobody is in a hurry. The snack at 4 pm when work drags. The thing you grab on the way out the door. Once you have the moment, the idea has something to push against, and the audience recognises their own life in it.
Find the physical action
Every food has one action that sells it. The crack of a chocolate bar. The stretch of melted cheese. The pour. The crunch. The steam coming off the plate.
That action has to be in the film, shot properly, close and slow enough to feel. Whatever the concept is, it should lead to that moment, not cover it up. You can have the most creative idea in the world, but if the crunch doesn't sound like a crunch, the ad has failed.
The pack has to be findable
This one is very practical. After the ad, people go to the shop. They need to recognise what they saw.
That means the packaging needs a proper moment on screen, the right colour, the right shape, ideally in a situation that feels like the shelf or the fridge. A beautiful film that nobody can connect to a product on the shelf is an expensive mood board.
Use the trick for a reason
AI, 3D and VFX make almost any image possible now. That's great. It also means it's easy to make spectacle for its own sake.
The question I ask is: does this trick make the food more appealing, or does it just make the ad look expensive? A giant strawberry falling into a city is fun. A giant strawberry falling into a city that ends in the most perfect close-up of a strawberry yoghurt - now you have an ad.
Real food, real texture
Generated food has a problem. It looks almost right. Too glossy, too perfect, slightly plastic. Viewers feel it even if they can't explain it, and appetite is exactly the thing that feeling kills.
For the shots where texture matters, we'd always rather shoot the real thing and use the technology around it - for the world, the setting, the surprise. The food itself should be food.
Got a food or drink brand that deserves an ad people actually remember? Tell us about it.
