I Love You Hater: Santo & Sprite Fight Cyber Bullying

 

Maxi Itzkoff
Co Founder Slap Global
 

Tell us about your role in the creation of this work.

It’s a pretty uncomfortable campaign for Sprite. From the wording and the examples to the romantic music and not showing the product. These are things the brand has never done before.

My role, apart from the creative aspect, was to protect the campaign at every stage of the process, making sure it wouldn’t end up in a “Coca-Cola musical”.

 

Give us an overview of the campaign, what is it about?

The campaign is about having a point of view about hate in the world, and as if Sprite was a mantra, try and help people to stay fresh in the face of attacks.

 

Tell us about the details creative brief, what did it ask?

I think that since we participated of the pitch more than a year ago, I’ve almost forgotten about what the brief itself was about.

But I do remember that the client came to us with one unique objective that was connecting to young people, and being truly relevant to them. It might seem a cliché, but it really isn’t if the brand is opened to change its own way of doing things.

 

Which insight led to the creation of this piece of work?

The insight is not the most important thing here, but the tone instead.

A huge bunch of things can be said under the same insight, but the key is the way they are said, and who says them. In this campaign, there are no actors playing a role. It’s all about real people exposed to all sort of hurtful comments. In fact, we didn’t make the comments up, they are attacks these people suffer for real.

 

Can you share with us any alternative ideas (if any) for this campaign? Why was this idea chosen?

We thought of a lot of things. Most of them related to humor, because it’s what naturally comes up first when you see what Sprite has been doing until now.

But at some point, we felt that doing exactly that same thing, would lead us to doing one more Sprite campaign of the bunch. So, we discussed all of the ideas and considered the possibility of a change in the tone of voice and to be a bit deeper, without losing the typical Sprite irreverence.

 

What was the greatest challenge that you and your team faced during development.

I think it was what I already mentioned. The most complicated thing has been to protect the tone of the campaign. A day-to-day work. That’s even more complicated when the spokesperson is not a single market, because this is a global campaign.

 

What did you enjoy most about seeing this campaign through?

It’s very difficult to make a global campaign that doesn’t end in a vanilla thing.

There are so many layers to go through, that I think that what I’m enjoying the most is seeing it has come to life just the way we thought it in the first place.

 

Did you learn anything new from the experience?

It’s not that I’ve learned something new, but it did help me reinforce what I always think: everything is about people. And not about brands.

I feel very lucky to being able to work with amazing people from the client’s side and that is the reason why we achieved this.

 

Where do you see this campaign going in the future?

Only the launch itself is about love as a palliative to neutralize hatred, but the campaign is more about the different ways of staying fresh. This is what we’re going to see in the following pieces that will be released throughout the year.