Sprite goes off the wall with Yonk in new “parallel universe” ads

Yonk, Wieden+Kennedy São Paulo, The Youth Company and Colossal are the creative team behind four excellent new Sprite commercials. (If you’ve yet to watch them, press play, bask in the weirdness, and come back to us.) The campaign is based around the idea of the “Spriteverse”, an alternative universe that offers a break from the nerve-frying “mental heat” and obligations of our daily lives, explains Yonk.

With The Youth Company working on production and Colossal directing, Yonk works in its usual process of VR sculpting and while a big name client doesn’t always equal creative freedom, the commercials are pure, unadulterated Yonk in style. “Both Sprite and Wieden+Kennedy São Paulo completely embraced the wackiness and weirdness that is Yonk and gave so much freedom to create this dreamlike parallel world,” says the 3D duo.

The narratives, cooked up by The Youth Company and Wieden+Kennedy, are what Yonk describes as “totally bizarre but relatable at the same time”. The spots take place in familiarly mundane environments – from a busy bus to a long queue – though the scenarios end with stranger resolutions, like characters melting or floating away on Sprite-shaped inflatables. Yonk says it made conscious choices that all sculpted assets needed a clay material and to “harmonise” colours across each commercial.

“This project was the first time that we built a world around our characters which at first felt like it may be a challenge to overcome,” Yonk says. “What we found interesting is that we began by trying to fill the universe with a large number of sculpted details giving it maximalist style, but stripping it back to a few assets to hint at where the scene is taking place instantly gave an otherworldly atmosphere.” The duo says that by keeping things bare in some scenes, it suggests a limitless world “where bizarre things can happen”, adding that viewers should look out for some easter eggs hidden in each commercial.