Melting

Read the campaign story

Perrier’s Melting campaign appeared in 2009 through Ogilvy Paris. The print archive records April publication and credits Jean-Yves Lemoigne, while May coverage describes the related film directed by Frédéric Planchon. Its melting-world imagery is treated as one cross-format idea, not separate cases for each setting or production contributor.

The sources document a surreal visual premise rather than a scientific claim about the drink. This study makes no assertion of superior hydration, cooling performance or protection from heat illness, and adopts no commercial outcome. The useful question is how an exaggerated environment can communicate a familiar feeling without encouraging viewers to mistake an imaginative contrast for evidence about what a product can do.

Editorial interpretation: changing the environment instead of the product can create a strong point of contrast. The audience recognises an ordinary object within an impossible setting and uses that difference to interpret the message. This approach requires restraint. If every element behaves strangely, the intended relationship may disappear and leave only a memorable image with little connection to the brand proposition.

Editorial interpretation: a metaphor can travel between a moving sequence and a single image when its rule is simple enough to grasp quickly. The formats need not reproduce the same scene. They should preserve the same relationship between the imagined problem and the bounded offer. A smaller team can test that relationship with drawings before investing in visual effects or attempting any physical recreation.

Write the metaphor in plain language first

Describe the intended meaning without visual embellishment, then identify which parts of the image carry it. Ask whether the exaggeration clarifies that meaning or introduces a different claim. This is especially important in categories associated with bodily sensations. A striking depiction should not imply a health benefit simply because the creative team thinks the fantasy is too obvious to take literally.

Keep one stable reference inside the unusual world

Give viewers a recognisable point from which to interpret the scene. Test a simplified sketch before adding texture, movement or multiple locations. If people cannot explain the contrast, more production detail may make the confusion harder to notice rather than solve it. The stable element should support the communication, not merely serve as a convenient place to insert a logo. Ask whether the image still communicates the same modest idea when the accompanying explanation is removed, shortened or encountered after the visual.

Test cross-format meaning rather than identical execution

Compare a still image and a short storyboard using the same underlying idea. Ask what each format communicates on its own, including unintended implications. A campaign family can remain coherent while adapting composition and pacing to the medium. Do not assume that a qualification apparent in a film will survive when one frame becomes a poster or an isolated social image.

A small test for another brief

Proposed adaptation: illustrate a fictional desk organiser in a world of exaggeratedly tangled paper lines, with the organiser’s modest sorting role clearly explained in plain text.

Measure whether reviewers identify the intended sorting benefit and recognise the surrounding world as an exaggeration. Ask them to state what the organiser cannot be expected to do. Compare the metaphor with a literal product diagram, and retain it only if the visual surprise improves understanding without creating unrealistic expectations about performance.

Stop if the concept implies protection from a hazard, requires unsafe physical recreation or turns a visual metaphor into an unsupported technical promise.

• Use original drawings rather than physical effects.
• Create one still and one three-frame sequence.
• Make no health, temperature or material-performance claims.