Who Needs Pants? Sugar Brand Unzips Workplace Nudity

Revealing a fresh approach in the conference room

It’s a stripped-down campaign, OK?

Sugar brand In the Raw goes the workplace humor/ad-sendup route via Broken Heart Love Affair. In the super-goody spot below, brand execs evaluate ideas for a new marketing push. Naturally, naked people show up to illustrate the proposals.

“On set, we were walking a very fine line,” agency CCO Carlos Moreno tells Muse. “We’re literally taking ‘raw’ too far, but we never wanted the joke to feel crass or over the top. The tone had to land in that space of, ‘This is absurd … but I’ve absolutely been in this meeting before.’ The boardroom setting was deliberately familiar, with minimal art direction, so the comedy lived almost entirely in subtle performance.”

Props to all for owning such a sophomoric scenario and making it work. This is advertising, not rocket science! Not everything needs to pack cinematic punch—especially when the term “cinematic” has been so overused that it’s basically meaningless. Here, we get 60 seconds of memorable brand-boosting silliness—isn’t that sweet enough?

“Casting the nude roles sparked a few careful conversations,” says Aaron Ruell, who directed through Holiday Films. “It’s not every day you ask people to appear naked in a commercial. We made sure everyone understood the tone: understated, comedic, and never gratuitous.”

“Then we had to settle on the drawings and how the private bits would be hidden,” he recalls. “The goal was to hide as little of the body as possible. And, surprisingly, it went smoothly with approvals.”

The situation scores owing to “Aaron’s ability to draw out subtle cues, the micro-expressions, the half smiles, the quiet reactions that feel completely natural,” says Matt Barrett, senior director of marketing at SIR parent Cumberland Packing Corp.

“Instead of exaggerated performances, he focused on the in-between moments,” he adds. “A glance. A look of shock. A small shift in expression. That subtlety is harder than going big. It takes trust and discipline. But it reflects the brand perfectly. Less noise. More intention.”

The film drops this week, anchoring a push that includes refreshed packaging and digital experiences.