Coca-Cola
Happiness Factory
Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam
Coke’s Happiness Factory ad introduces viewers to a marvellous, magical world, all housed within a humble drinks vending machine. The spot begins with a man putting a coin into the slot of the machine, before the action switches to inside, where a lavish animated world awaits. We see various characters producing the bottle of Coke: filling it, sealing it with a cap, chilling it and then sending it out into the world via a triumphant, carnival-esque launch party. Created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam and directed by Psyop in New York, Happiness Factory was Coke’s first global brand campaign for over ten years. The brief that the brand gave the agency was simple: ‘Happiness in a bottle’.
01-03 The Coke Happiness Factory commercial took viewers into the animated world within a Coca-Cola vending machine. The spot showed a fresh bottle of the fizzy brown stuff lovingly prepared for its purchaser by a range of unusual but lovable characters.
Wieden + Kennedy began thinking of ways to articulate this, and remembered a previous piece of work by Psyop that sparked the idea for the ad. ‘We had been collaborating with a number of animation companies to create short films we called “bottle films”,’ remember Rick Condos and Hunter Hindman, creative directors on the spot. ‘One of those companies was Psyop. They had sent through a treatment for a simple cut-paper animation that represented the inside of a Coke machine. While it was wildly different from the spot we ended up making together, we loved the base concept.… We wanted to create an entire world inside of the machine – to write a new mythology for Coca-Cola that would reawaken the love we all shared for the brand at one time.’
‘Coke is one of the few brands that almost everyone in the world has experienced,’ they continue. ‘So we needed a simple story with archetypal characters that demonstrated the happiness that is delivered with every bottle. We looked at Pixar films, epic films like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and the art of Hieronymus Bosch. We wanted to create a world that felt big and cinematic, but still human and emotional. More than anything, we wanted to try and create something unexpected and unique for a brand that had a long history of great commercials.’
The creatives explored other options before settling on using animation. Initially they considered a live-action spot, but felt that an animated world would ultimately appeal to a wider audience. Various production partners were looked at for the job, but it was decided that Psyop was ‘the obvious choice’. For Psyop, the pitching process was indeed surprisingly straightforward: ‘This is probably the spot we are most recognized for and one of the shortest pitches we ever did,’ say directors Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick. ‘It was around four days, from getting the brief to flying to Amsterdam for the kick-off meeting! This happened at a time when Coke really wanted to push their brand and were prepared to take the risk, and had a lot of faith in us to come up with something great. The creative process went extremely smoothly.’
04-05 Drawings of two of the characters: the Mortar Man (04), who has the task of looking after all the other creatures in the Happiness Factory (and is later catapulted in a stream of fire during the Launch Parade at the end of the spot), and one of the Love Puppies (05), who kiss each and every bottle before it is sent out into the world.
06 Drawing featuring a Majorette character. The Majorettes lead the Launch Parade that takes place at the end of the Happiness Factory commercial.
Psyop worked closely with Wieden + Kennedy to devise the script. ‘We would spend hours coming up with characters,’ say Condos and Hindman. ‘Breaking down the story. Crumpling up paper and starting all over again. It was unlike any other project we had worked on. Finally, we broke the story down to its guts. Deliver the bottle. Fill the bottle. Love the bottle. Chill the bottle. Celebrate the bottle. From that framework, we built a world. We commissioned artists to create matte paintings for our backgrounds. We sweated the details of every frame.’
Coke has a history of animated characters in its advertising, with its polar bear ads particularly well-loved by audiences. For Happiness Factory, a quirkier set of characters was created, which exist entirely in a world of the imagination. Each of the figures has a specific role in the ad: Chinoinks (pig Chinook helicopters) transport the bottle, while the Capper catapults onto to it, placing the lid on top. The bottle is sealed with a kiss by the Love Puppies and then chilled by the Penguins using pulverized snowmen.
‘We wanted to create an entire world inside of the machine — to write a new mythology for Coca-Cola that would reawaken the love we all shared for the brand at one time.’
07-10 Detailed storyboards by the directors at Psyop reveal how each shot of the Coke Happiness Factory commercial was carefully planned.
‘The main approach for all the characters was to make sure there was a little salt with the sweet,’ say Mueller and Matulick. ‘We wanted to keep them quirky and edgy but lovable. We really wanted to raise eyebrows with our character design, and make people take a closer look, and be surprised by all the unexpected details. They also needed to be relatable and inspire happiness within people.’
‘We did a couple of characters that were deemed unnecessary for the spots,’ they continue. ‘There was one who was polishing the Coke bottle like it was in a disco car wash; a Rembrandt painter who would paint the labels on; and we had a couple of fun ideas for the “loving the bottle” scene that were a little too risqué. We designed hundreds of characters, including all the ones we just experimented with on paper, that didn’t make it.’
Happiness Factory was six months in the making. While certainly a challenging ad to make, it is surprising to discover that neither Wieden + Kennedy or Psyop remember any major headaches in its creation. In fact, for the agency, finding the music was perhaps the hardest part of the process. ‘I think we put over 200 tracks, many of them composed, against the pictures throughout production,’ say Condos and Hindman. ‘In the end, Human in New York created the music, which can still be found on many Coke spots.’
The spot launched in 2006 and was an immediate success. The campaign has since aired in more than 100 countries worldwide, and has spawned a number of sequels, including a longer piece that takes the viewer on an epic journey deep into the animated world of the ad.
‘We broke the story down to its guts. Deliver the bottle. Fill the bottle. Love the bottle. Chill the bottle. Celebrate the bottle. From that framework, we built a world.’
11 Early ideas for the style of the commercial, shown alongside images of the industrial buildings that inspired part of the ad’s look.
12 A drawing of one of the proposed backdrops for the animation.
13 An early drawing showing the coin first entering the animated world of Happiness Factory.
14 Early sketch revealing the development of the characters, including some that didn’t make it into the final ad
Happiness Factory’s cast of characters, as described by Wieden + Kennedy
Chinoinks
Chinoinks are giant flying pig-borgs who airlift Coke bottles through the Happiness Factory with dedication and the tightly knit subculture of hardened long-distance truckers. Their CB radio-style chatter is nearly incomprehensible to outsiders.
Love Puppies
Love Puppies are hyperactive critters who are by far the hardest to tame and manage in the Happiness Factory.
Their three purposes in life appear to be to eat, emote and reproduce, all of which they perform extremely well. Instead of generating waste, a Love Puppy gives birth to another Love Puppy.
Workers
The Workers are the most populous species in the Happiness Factory, coming in all shapes, sizes and specializations. Originally from a far-off, forgotten place in the Hinterlands, the Workers display an uncanny affinity for sensing Cola, the sacred element around which their entire tribal culture revolved.
Cappers
A rare blend of steely nerves and corrosive cockiness, the charismatic Capper is a Top Gun who loves to live dangerously. He thrives on the acclaim he receives for performing his ballistic ballets, catapulting himself at nearly impossible trajectories and in fearless defiance of gravity to land caps on the Coke bottles with perfectly applied force. Statistically speaking, his success rate is pretty good.
Penguins
Primarily responsible for cooling Coke to a perfect icy crispness, they also tinker with their subzero calculation systems, have nerdy arguments over trivia, gloat over their temperature-controlled vintage Coke cellars, and tell each other terrible maths jokes.
Mortar Men
Every morning, Mortar Men zip themselves into their shiny suits and prepare to do what they were trained to do from childhood: ensure the safety of everyone in the Happiness Factory, to be catapulted in a stream of fire during Launch Parades, and to put the wellbeing of others ahead of their own.
Poppers
Exhibiting a tendency to get overexcited at the slightest provocation, Poppers will gladly end their own lives by exploding with enthusiasm. Literally. When they pop in a runaway chain reaction, thousands of tiny bits of glittery Popper bubbles settle like glowing snow and infuse the people of the factory with seminal moments of joy.
Aviators (Flying Machine Guys)
Itinerant, roaming mechanics who can fix anything up and make it nearly good as new, zipping about in their agile, home-rigged and half-baked Flying Machines, Aviators are the nomadic ‘junkmen’ of Happiness Factory.
Majorettes
The Launch Parade is the most crucial step in the preparation of a Coke bottle. This is when the entire community of the Happiness Factory is drawn together to celebrate and infuse the bottle with their collective enthusiasm as they send it on its way to the Outside. Majorettes are the de facto conductors of this major event.
Bandroids
Bandroids are the resident mariachi masterminds of the Happiness Factory, who pipe the musical soul into each bottle of Coca-Cola. The many species of Instrumentalists include the Nostril-In Player (Nose Flute), Pounders (Drums), and Tubalators (Tuba). Each naturally talented species has evolved to form a symbiotic relationship with their instrument and with one another. Bandroids tend to worship Majorettes.
15-18 Characters in the Coke Happiness Factory spot.
19-20 Stills from the final commercial show the characters at work in the Coke Happiness Factory.
‘The main approach for all the characters was to make sure there was a little salt with the sweet. We wanted to keep them quirky and edgy but lovable.’
21 Early drawings of the Worker character.