Busted! Soft Drink Tango Tweaks 'Dangerous' Cop-Show Tropes

Drop those sodas and assume the position!

Mixing cop-show tropes with absurdist humor, U.K. soft drink Tango launches its first work in four years through VCCP London.

Spoiler: It’s a bust. By which we mean a :60 from director Ben Tonge finds law enforcement raiding a “Tango Dark Berry Lab” and discovering cans, beakers and test tubes—in fact, a whole bricked-up wall—filled with that sweet purple beverage.

One of the fuzz takes a taste and starts acting silly before the tagline “Get Tango’d” flashes on screen.

Did we mention that it’s silly? Sure is. But true to the brand’s loopy marketing DNA, with a dash of contemporary ITV crime drama and vintage Monty Python tossed in. (It’d be the perfect PopCorners chaser for Walt and Jesse!)

“Tango is the reason many of us got into advertising in the first place, so we all knew we had huge shoes to fill when coming up with an entirely new campaign for the brand,” says VCCP creative director George Wait. “Tango has always pushed the boundaries on what’s acceptable for a soft drink. We’ve tried to honor this heritage, taking the brand back to its roots of comedic hyperbole.”

To fete the new flavor, “We’ve created a world, redefining the whole perception of Tango as a substance and giving new life to the idea of getting ‘Tango’d,'” he adds. “We’re excited to unleash this campaign on the world and continue to play in this slightly ridiculous, edgy and unmistakably ‘Tango’ universe we’ve created.”

VCCP and its content studio Girl&Bear worked with Infused (the in-house team at Tango parent Britvic), plus influencer expert Whalar, media shop MSix, visual identity house Bloom and PR agency Cirkle.

“The set build and pre-light was key to ensuring we created the most impactful Tango Dark Berry lab, with our working drinks contraption bubbling away, to the purple hues in our lighting to ooze that tangy flavor,” Girl&Bear producer Maxine Denton tells Muse.

“The top three moments from the shoot were: smashing a fake wall in one take, PC Johnson’s non-stop dancing, and 1,400 Tango cans falling on our last shot of the day,” she says.