Posted by It’s progressively becoming a recurrent appointment for the holiday season every year, and fans are incredibly happy about it. The Internet is crazy about the Ocean Spray commercial that arrives on American TV every year around Thanksgiving: the ad went already viral in 2022 as the “wiggle” commercial, and this year, the cooperative released a sort of sequel with the same concept. This time, we have a wicked lady driving the action, the product is cranberry juice, the actress catches the spotlight, and the song is just fire.
It all started in 2022, when Ocean Spray released a new commercial promoting their jellied cranberry sauce. The peculiar consistency of the jellied sauce becomes the ad’s protagonist: a family is sitting for dinner, waiting for food. Nobody talks or moves a muscle, until they start staring at the sauce wiggling before their eyes. It’s hypnotic: suddenly, they all get crazy, and the holiday mood is saved. Here it is:
The unique concept is taken, evolved, and made perfect in 2023. It’s again a boring gathering, a party where they all seem they are soon going to sleep. Until the protagonist enters the scene: she’s been named the “playful grandma,” but she’s more like a wicked lady: a master puppeteer who adds cranberry juice to the average drink available for everybody. The liquid starts spinning, and… well, you can imagine. Watch it below, and focus on the lady’s facial expressions.
Both commercials have been an original creation of Orchard Creative’s CCO David Kolbusz, described as “one of the ad industry’s most sought-after creative leaders.” Admittedly, the 2023 Ocean Spray commercial is intended to follow up the success they had last year. He explained in a recent interview that the final result came up pretty spontaneously after they saw the actress entering the studio: she was literally stealing the scene, and they immediately understood she deserved more space in the ad. Her facial expressions are just memorable. Unfortunately, the identity of the actress hasn’t been officially revealed, but as soon as we know something, you’ll find this information in this article.
The other protagonist of the Ocean Spray commercial is definitely the song, and about that, we know enough: as last year, the background music is an original track created on purpose by Paris The Black Fu, aka Mack Goudy Jr., a member of the long-time Detroit techno band Detroit Grand Pubahs. The song hasn’t been released as a separate single because it was commissioned specifically for the Ocean Spray commercial. One of their most famous songs as Detroit Grand Pubahs is Sandwiches (you can find it here), whereas one of the most beloved tracks published by Paris The Black Fu is Dis turb ance int he tim eline (here on Youtube). His music is also a great lesson to learn about the classic “Detroit sound,” one of the backbones in the history of electronic music: fast, futuristic, and heavily injected with synths.
Once again, the Ocean Spray Thanksgiving commercial with its cranberry juice risks becoming the one and only protagonist of the holiday season: everybody just loves it, repeatedly searching it on the Internet, watching it over and over again. Is it more because of the hilarious lady or the irresistible song? That’s hard to tell.
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