Mermaids and a Friendly Shrub Help Tesco Tout Its Community Service Programs

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Sometimes, it’s tough for brands to deliver entertaining messages while hyping their community-service programs. How can they keep viewers engaged without lapsing into shameless self-promotion or sentimental cliches?

Maybe try tossing an ambulatory shrub that befriends kids into the mix. And don’t forget the mermaids!

Such unexpected elements deliver for Tesco Ireland in the :40 below. BBH Dublin and Riff Raff director Rich Hall craft a campaign that’s sincere but a tad off-kilter.

The tale starts sedately enough in a taxi. A Tesco staffer recounts the highlights of her day, which just might be the stuff that dreams are made of.

Fantasy rarely, if ever, plays into this kind of project. Here, the supermarket chain spotlights specific initiatives in a way that feels fresh and compelling. Why just brag about your sensory garden when you make the topiary hop, skip and jump?

“We tried to blend the real with the unreal,” BBH associate CD Aubrey O’Connell and production director David Lynch tell Muse. “In typical Irish fashion, the storyteller holds the room, kicks through the gears, and her sometimes poetic way of describing things leads to this magical visual world.”

“Everything you’re hearing is true. How you’re seeing it, well, that’s up to the driver’s imagination.”

The cab-ride set-up helps anchor events in the workaday world, a crucial balance for the wilder sequences. The team caught as much in camera as possible, with CGI added where necessary.

So, about that big green guy..

“The shrub went through different passes visually—different tests on movements, different heights and widths,” say Lynch and O’Connell. “It was complex, but we loved every second of it.”

And they didn’t use AI, not even for that trip beneath the sea.

“The mermaids were shot for real in a huge water tank and perfectly comped into the car interior shots.”

There’s OOH, too.

Related: Tesco’s F+F Fashion Line Rolls in Silly Style