Fanta takes positive brand associations to the extreme

Fanta’s new ad is dedicated to the significance of doing what brings you joy.

It can be as simple as enjoying a refreshing, lip-smacking Fanta, prompting just one straightforward question: Want a sip?

Revisiting one of Fanta’s classic themes, the brand introduces a multi-year, multi-platform experience aimed at inspiring and nudging Gen Z to strike a balance between their obligations and aspirations.

The campaign spans digital content reflecting the lives of Gen Z, contextual out-of-home and shopper activations, collaborations with TikTok influencers, branded challenges, and more throughout the year.

As part of the North American launch, an interactive Wanta Fanta Mobile experience will tour select cities this summer, surprising and delighting fans with iconic music.

Central to the campaign is a revamped version of the iconic Wanta Fanta tune from the early 2000s, featuring updated lyrics focusing on Gen Z’s ongoing struggle to reconcile their needs and desires while retaining the original's catchy hook.

Fanta teams worldwide collaborated on the campaign's development, ensuring cultural relevance and localisation for their respective markets, languages, and musical talents. Despite cultural nuances, the core insight remains universal: Gen Z and younger millennials worldwide feel the pressure to balance their needs and wants while yearning for joy and fulfillment.

The Wanta Fanta campaign debuted in the US in April, and will be followed by launches in China, Japan, Korea, and other markets in the coming months.

Our take

The 1996 film Forest Gump placed the titular character in a series of historic moments, such as segregation, Watergate and the Vietnam War. Heartwarming as this all was, it cynically relied on a cunning plot device to associate the character with our emotional collective memories.

Fanta’s campaign uses this trick in quick succession, with its characters going through a marriage proposal, a fruitful working relationship and a UFO landing in rapid fire succession: to the point where frankly the viewer isn’t really sure what’s going on, but they’re pretty sure they fancy a Fanta.

Fanta apparently wants to make these experiences more relevant to local markets, with adverts more tailored to certain cultures and demographics: a tactic which follows a recent trend (seen last month by Heinz), in which brands - enabled by easier geolocation of advertising - are driving bespoke campaigns with stealth and specificity to local regions.

The Wanta campaign TV spot plays on a lot of our shared cultural highs – and ones seen in our favourite movies, but how far will this idea of creating adverts ‘tailored to you’ go in the future? Surely we’re not far off from everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame with hyper-personalised adverts. Watch this space.