Coca-Cola “Unity”

Posted by Justin Cone

W+K Portland tapped the prodigious powers of Smith&Foulkes (Nexus Productions) for this lively Coke spot starring Yao Ming and LeBron James. It’s a battle royale of East versus West, with each player bringing an army of cultural icons to his aid.

As with most of S&F’s work, the beauty is in the details, and this one deserves some frame-by-frame attention. From the baroque symmetry of the compositions to the architectural elements in the background, no pixel was left untouched.

Oh, and I love the confetti transition to live action at the end. It’s simple, seamless and effective.


Client Coca-Cola

W+K Portland
Creative Directors Hal Curtis, Sheena Brady
Copywriter Dylan Lee
Art Director Mira Kaddoura
Account team Ryan Peterson
Producer Kevin Diller
Agency Business Affairs Teresa Lutz

Production Company Nexus
Director Smith & Foulkes
Executive Producer Julia Parfitt
Producer Melody Sylvester
Editor
Post-Production company
Audio Post-Prod. company Digital One

Effects
Color Correction
Titles/Graphics
Talent

Music Eclectic
Executive producer Cliff Wilson

Sound Design Eclectic
Producer Cliff Wilson

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.
More by Justin >

33 Comments

stephen giem

beautiful work

wabash

Wow this is a fun piece, a great combination of motion, solid 3D and really nice transitions. I found it interesting how they (whoever they may be) decided to sum up the American side of the “culture battle” with cheer leaders, cowboys, grizzly bears, Santa….all it was really fun to see the cultural icons of east and west opposed with colorful symmetry, there are some really beautiful frames here.

The music even has a nice Asian hip-hop remix, catchy.

jace bobius

am i the only one that thinks this is garbage? also, does anyone care about ethics at all or is that all just thrown out the window by e’ryone

paktu

I guess it’s garbage if it offends you? That’s some odd logic.

dp

weird underlying metaphors and gross generalizations depicted aside, this is exactly the kind of cute cultural competition the Olympic committee likes to see.

of course at the end of the day, Coke is the great equalizer to save us all.. yet how ironic that coke isn’t a chinese product.

lol

Marc B.

Coca-Cola is a global corporation they don’t give a shit who’s buying or drinking it as long as the $$$ are pouring in.

As for the ad itself i don’t have much to say about it really other than it’s not my favorite Smith & Foulkes spot. But it ain’t too bad either.

notyourmamasan

wow Marc! your comments never seize to amaze me. You have to be the single most gifted artist in the planet cause everything posted here always fails to impresses you. I have yet to find a constructive comment from you where a slightest sign of praise of any form can be found.

I wish you would follow your own advise and say nothing. We are all aware of Coke´s global corporate image. You beat the hell out of the topic when Happiness Factory was posted and personally I dont give a crap if its your favorite Smith & Foulkes spot or not. Why don´t you just do us all a favor and crawl back to the hole you came out of and let the rest of us enjoy each others work for a change.

wtf

…wow wtf is your problem? He didn’t even fucking say anything bad about it.

let me guess…you animated some particles in this piece and took SERIOUS offense to it.

chill out man. seriously.

Marc B.

Thanks wtf!

Marc B.

You must be someone from psyop right? Because as much as i might have commented on their work as much you did your efforts in defending them. Come on we all know they do great stuff but maybe that’s why i’m not completely falling into the fanboyism scheme.

And we’re not in nazi germany where we have to obey and love everything the furor does.

Just because i sound a tad more cynical doesn’t mean i don’t like anything on here. In fact if you follow some of my other comments you’ll notice i do praise stuff too.

the spelling nazi

it’s führer

notyourmamasan

I am not from Psyop and I had nothing to do with this spot. I am just someone that is sick and tired of listening to you gripe and whine on every single comment that you post.

What does Coke’s corporate history have to do with this spot? I´m sure you feel sooo repulse by what “The Corporation” has done in the past, that you feel morally obligated to throw in your two cents in a feeble attempt to show us your sense of righteousness . I am sure that you go well out of your way to avoid buying and using any of their products. Even if this was the case, you could try to educate us on the matter; give us examples and personal stories, heck, it would still be out of place, but you would at least garner some respect.
The work that is showcased here is showcased for the art and the talent that went into producing it. I understand you may have problems with the art direction or the animation, or any of the steps that go into producing these spots,lighting, modeling fx, etc etc but your comments never ever include any such insights.
Furthermore, you are grievously mistaken if you think that your comments make you come across as cynical. Your comments lack wit, satire and sarcasm which we all know to be a must in cynicism. Your comments only make you sound immature, and inexperienced with a need to prove yourself in a field where others excel at.
So if indeed you are sooo talented and soo experienced in this field that all you see here falls short of your expectations, I appeal to you to please make an effort to educate us as to why it is and as to how you would have done things differently. If not; get a job, get some experience, educate yourself in history and world affairs; find yourself a just cause and fight for it and then do comeback and put some meat behind your comments.

Marc B.

Dear notyourmamasan,
how come you bitch about my post when above me someone is saying “am i the only one that thinks this is garbage?”

I wasn’t even saying it was crap did i?

You’re totally confused dear

notyourmamasan

and you´re totally ignoring or not understanding my issue with you..pointing fingers only reinforces it my Dear!

Marc B.

I love you too

notyourmamasan

you my dear are nothing but a fool

boca

Wow, things are getting way to personal I’m afraid…
It’s great to see heated and passionate discussions, but this is far out folks.
This is a blog guys, not a place for dirty laundry.
Why don’t we all go out for a beer sometime and talk it over eh? ;-)
Cheerio

boca

My treat too! ;-)

notyourmamasan

I would love to, but by the sound of things I do not believe Marc B is of legal drinking age yet.

Simon Robson

I particularly love the Hawk vs coy carp scene, very cool.

boca

Chinese atrocities aside, wicked piece of motion graphics!

PMC

Yup deadly graphics, but come on ‘Coke unites the world’ – the message is a bit much for me.

nocomply

There IS a Santa Claus! And he’s American!

boca

Of course he is, Coke invented him (at least the Red one)! :-D

romain

Outch, it’s very impressive, especially when we pass in the real life :)
Good post.

jonny p

lots of detail, the way the dragon is painted, beautiful

Merendino

There are a group of line dancing cow girls in a couple of frames. At first I thought it was lame that they re-used the model/animation of the character to fill up space… then it dawned on me they were line dancing, and I was filled with glee. Thats freaking awesome.

Matt

(^) Yeah, and they all seem to be modeled differently too (diff hair color, etc. – like the cheerleaders) which is way cool, seeing that you’d barely have time to absorb it (on TV).

Really like the details I can associate with (as an American): Santa, the Space Shuttle, bison, even Boss Hog’s limo! – very cool (but who’s riding in it? is that MJ?).

One point of contention: giant floating sundaes? I’m not sure if those are considered bragging rights… I would get behind giant pizza pies, though.

Obvious excruciating amount of work for this spot. I really like the character animation style. Well done!

Lands

Nice work. Yes, the transition at the end to live action is great. Watched that part a few times.

Some people feel the need to inject polictics and world views into every conversation…

Andy

Matt Clark put some stills on his blog: https://www.matt-clark.co.uk

suprememoves

The behind the scenes work is something I always love to see. Really reminds you of the sheer amount of work that goes into it.

jonny p

It would be fantastic to hear more about this project and the team that worked on it, There is an incredible attention to detail.

Goulash

I have to say, I’m a little underwhelmed by this spot also. It feels as though something has been cut out or even rushed.. there’s definately something missing, and maybe it’s the Smith and Foulkes gene, despite they created this..

Comments are closed.