Pocari Sweat is a soft drink formulated to restore electrolyte balance and aid rehydration, and our brief was to associate the product value of refreshment after physical exertion with the search for self-realisation that drives Japanese youth, who are the product's primary target market. One of our biggest challenges was depicting the inner fantasy world of our heroine in a realistic way.

Director's Comments In order to realistically express the dynamism of the heroine jumping and running on the "magic cloud" in the dream world, we dared not use CG or digital effects in the commercial production. However, to do so, it was necessary to create a transparent tent outdoors so that the clouds created by the dry ice and fog machine would not be affected by the surrounding wind.

Concurrent with the initial airing of our commercial on Japanese network TV, we uploaded it along with a “Making Of” video to YouTube, where it has received 4.9 million views in the 10 months since. We also disseminated both videos via Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, receiving 41,970 mentions on Twitter in the first week after launch and over 800 comments on TikTok. In addition, the original theme song composed for the commercial, “Pale Rain,” was ranked No. 1 on Spotify Japan’s Viral 50 hit chart in the first week of its release. Overseas, the commercial was featured in articles in both the English-language and Spanish-language press, and on China’s Weibo it has garnered 1.3 million views, 9,800 shares, 1.7 million likes, and 261 comments.