Coca-Cola

According to the Lunar New Year Zodiac, the Rabbit is the luckiest of the twelve animals – it’s been our good fortune and joy to reunite with Ogilvy Shanghai for the second Lunar New Year in a row, bringing the real magic of Coca-Cola’s Year of the Rabbit campaign to life with director Yves Geleyn and his talented team of artists.

Yves’ poignant storytelling and command of narrative details magnify the emotional intimacy of our family’s journey to overcome their differences. Contrast heightens the underlying message by emphasizing the generational divide of our Grandma and Grandson Rabbits, alongside the differences in their worlds.

This culminates in a particularly arresting moment of reunification and belonging – when Coca-Cola, our catalyst of joy and togetherness, reminds the Rabbits and the audience of this season’s powerful campaign message: Lunar New Year may change, but celebrating together is magic.

This charming look behind the scenes gives just a taste of the magic it took to create Coca-Cola’s Year of the Rabbit. Reuniting with many of the artists from last year’s Tiger film, we had a blast exploring our fuzzy heroes and their macro worlds

Peter de Sève is an award winning, legendary illustrator and character designer that straddles the line between timeless illustrations to modern, sharp designs. Having established a career over decades in designing for major feature films for studios like Pixar and Blue Sky Studios and publications like the New Yorker, we knew his designs would allow us to develop something truly unique and sentimental, rich with history and emotion.

With Peter’s help, Grandma and Grandson Rabbit’s designs feel connected to each other yet allow their distinct personalities to shine through. They’re opposites, and that’s written in everything from their different heights to different postures. But we can also see that they’re family. Their facial expressions and body language are bursting with the same emotional power and transcendence. They each have unique yet cohesive embroidered silk patterns, and when these unite with their fuzzy felt material, the characters’ evoke a whimsical tribute to the past that’s both charming and tactile.

"Peter has an unparalleled ability to express emotions with the flick of a pencil’s line. His contours and features bestow a human-like manner that allows these anthropomorphized animals to carry the weight of this story’s dramatic arc.” – Yves Geleyn

NARRATIVE & STORY
Our story begins with a journey, only this year – things have changed. The tables have turned and the oldest generation must travel to the youngest. Grandma prepares her home-made dumplings in a traditional burrough, dreaming of holiday’s past. After traveling through fields of tall grass, she reaches the Big City where her Grandson lives, a great stone city reaching into the sky. Grandson’s ultra-modern townhouse with its high ceilings and rock-hewn walls stands in stark contrast to the soft, cozy intimacy of Grandma’s home in the ground. Ears laid back, Grandma hops to the dining room table and is humbled by the opulent dishes. Grandson notices as Grandma hides her old-fashioned dumplings in her lap and lovingly hands her a Coke, refreshing her spirits with a bubbly reminder of all their special moments shared over this treasured tradition. With the dumplings centered in a place of honor, they clink their Coke’s in togetherness – like they always have, and always will.

LOOK & FEEL
Yves heightens the film’s underlying message through contrast and a macro lens, pulling us down into the rabbit’s perspective while deftly juxtaposing Chinese-inspired landscapes and fine details. The soft, organic touch of Grandma’s traditional home stands in stark contrast to the hard angularity of Grandson’s modern one, yet there’s a surprising warmth brought in by the lighting that helps them feel connected. This warm lighting is crucial so that neither traditional nor modern is seen as better than the other, reinforcing the overall theme that the same love lives underneath all our differences.

The tactility this year is much more natural and pronounced in this macro world. Even when placed inside the urban cityscape, we can feel the texture of the natural materials: the different grains in the wood and stone walls; the ridges of carrots; the slick condensation on Coca-Cola bottles. All of these natural textures combine to create rich worlds that invoke our senses with their familiarity.

ENVIRONMENT
The Binggou Danxia, a renowned Chinese vista of stone outcroppings surrounded by grassy plains, was the perfect inspiration for our environment. The landform’s features couldn’t be more different, yet you can’t have one without the other. The perfect setting for two worlds to collide!

THE FOOD
We see this nod to the past in the food, as well, alongside contrast to further illustrate our theme of the old and new worlds uniting. The time-honored dumplings made by Grandma are served in a traditional bamboo steamer, unadorned and simple – the way they should be. Surrounding the dumplings, the elegantly plated modern food is a feast for the eyes. Yet the same ingredients are used for both. Once again we see that we are all the same, even if we at first appear different.

MUSIC
Our master of sound, Ambrose Yu, returns! We were thrilled to once again have Ambrose compose the score and layer in compelling sound effects to tell our Lunar New Year story. His attention to detail and thoughtful approach adds a finesse that blends beautifully, building and releasing tension for a catharsis that is unexpected yet fully satisfying.