ポカリスエット | でも君が見えた | 2021
CG? Not CG? Who cares either way / POCARI SWEAT "But I Saw You"
A clever debate over "Is it CG or not?" matters a hundred million times less than that first "whoa" the moment you watch it.
The problem
POCARI SWEAT had been speaking to junior high and high schoolers since 2015, but in 2021 it decided to change. Instead of cheering people on from the sidelines, it wanted to quietly stand beside everyone who sweats. It had to portray an individual, but without sounding preachy or macho, and without becoming bland either. A tough order.
The insight
In a meeting with director Sho Yanagisawa, an idea came up: running against the flow of a hallway just to tell a friend "let's go home together." In a world full of headwinds, if the heroine chooses her own path and keeps moving forward, that headwind turns into a tailwind. That, they decided, felt like POCARI.
The idea
They actually built a rippling, wave-shaped hallway 85 meters long, with no CG at all. Sena Nakajima really ran down it. The walls were strips of curtain printed with a hallway design, and together with falling confetti they expressed a wind you couldn't otherwise see. According to the director, "what makes POCARI feel like POCARI is physicality," so they dropped CG and built a real set instead. The story follows a girl who spoke to a transfer student, their near-miss and eventual reunion, staged through a shift in scenery from wisteria to cherry blossoms. The music was by "A_o," a unit formed by Masaya Mifune of ROTH BART BARON and Aina the End of BiSH, with the song "BLUE SOULS."
What happened
The ad trended on Twitter on its release day, and passed 10 million views within a week. The identity of A_o was revealed ten days later in a livestream. The campaign won numerous awards, including at ADFEST, CICLOPE ASIA, the ONE SHOW, and Cannes Lions.
Afterthought
I watched it already knowing it wasn't CG, but in the end that didn't matter at all—what matters is only whether you get that "whoa" feeling. Dentsu's Sotaro Hoji once said something like, "If all you chase is logic and numbers, you'll never build a brand people actually love." I think that's exactly right. I want to keep living with that same blue-hearted feeling.
