Fizzy Pop Cherry Cola
Fifty years of pop.
In 1976, Fizzy Pop Cherry Cola was the loudest thing on television. Fifty years later I remade it from scratch: same brand, new streets, new energy. The Japanese version and the Fizola alternate take round out the set, all from one production system.
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Open loud. 1976
Open loud. 2026
プシュッと あけよう！
Turn on the sunshine.
The songs · Full length
Press play.
Both commercials started as complete songs. Here they are, start to finish. Play them here or take them with you.
The exercise was simple: how much can change when the underlying production system stays the same?
The answer is quite a lot.
The world, character, references, duration and AI-assisted pipeline stayed consistent. The personality, music, pacing, colour treatment, compositions and editorial decisions changed.
That made the two films a useful creative experiment: not just two ads, but two different answers to the same brief.
01 · Shot for shot
The same sequence. Different decisions.
The two films follow roughly the same visual progression. What changes is how each moment is handled.
01The lull
Same image. Different invitation into the film.
02The cold can
Fizola lets the anticipation breathe.
03The pop
Sometimes the better decision is removing the thing you worked hardest to make.
04The wave
Generated footage doesn’t have to make the final cut just because it exists.
05The street
The prompt is only the beginning. The eye still has to judge the result.
06The pour
AI video is often less about generating the perfect shot than finding the few seconds that actually work.
07Bubble rush
08The payoff
The final film is built from the best moments, not the complete generations.
09Hero float
10Packshot
02 · The brands
Designed to feel like they were remembered, not invented yesterday.
Both brands were designed as packaging first. Not technology brands. Not AI brands. Not fake startup identities. Colas.
The goal was to make each one feel as though you could have encountered it on a supermarket shelf in another decade.
Neither logo is derived from a real cola brand. They simply approach the same era from different directions. Fizzy Pop is brighter, cheekier and more energetic. Fizola is warmer, softer and slightly sun-faded.
Fizzy Pop Cherry Cola
Heavy rounded italic lettering, stacked and tilted upward, with a starburst and three rising bubbles. A sunflower-coloured pill carries the words CHERRY COLA.
Bright. Loud. A little ridiculous. Exactly right.
CherrySunflowerPoolColaFizz white
Fizola Cola
A heavy retro script tilted upward, backed by stacked stripes of gold, orange and brown. A rounded pill carries COLA.
Warmer. Smoother. A little more nostalgic.
TomatoOrangeGoldColaCream
03 · The songs
Two hooks for one summer.
The commercials didn’t just need background music. They needed brands that sounded like they had existed before.
Fizzy Pop!
The first idea was a voiceover over an instrumental. It became a jingle instead.
The musical direction was a 1970s television commercial crossed with modern funk-pop: bright female lead, gang vocals, handclaps, slap bass, brass stabs, wah guitar, glockenspiel and whistle.
Fizzy Pop, Fizzy Pop! Cherry cola, crack the top. Turn it up for the summer crowd. Fizzy Pop… open loud!
The key production decision was silence. The intro starts sleepy. Then everything drops out for one beat. A real can crack lands at 9.25 seconds. The musical drop follows at 9.61.
The sound isn’t layered over the music. The music makes room for it.
Download the jingle (MP3)Fizola
Fizola became a full original song rather than a traditional jingle.
The reference point was 1970s funk, soul and disco: slap bass, wah guitar, clavinet, horn stabs, cowbell, congas and disco strings.
Fi-zo-la, Fizola! Ice-cold sunshine cola. Turn it up for the summer crowd. Fizola… turn on the sunshine!
The song starts before it starts. For five seconds, the hook is muffled and distant, as though it’s playing somewhere down the block. Then the band enters with the wave.
Download the song (MP3)Writing for the edit
Neither commercial has room for a full song. So neither song was written only for the final 30 seconds.
The full tracks give the brands a larger identity. The commercials then take the strongest pieces and build around them.
When the verse gets cut, its information doesn’t disappear. It moves into the graphics.
What the ear doesn’t get, the eye gets.
04 · What stayed the same
The world stayed locked. The creative choices didn’t.
Both films live on Maple Street, a fictional neighbourhood built around the same visual language.
Maple StreetBrick townhouses in mint, peach and butter yellow. A striped awning. A red hydrant. A slightly faded summer afternoon.
JunoThe same character, with the same face, curls and freckles, restyled for each brand.
Four master referencesThe can, Juno’s portrait, Juno full body and the street. Each had a fixed description and served as a visual anchor throughout production.
Colour is the storyBoth films begin in a muted world. The cola becomes the visual trigger that brings the colour back.
The format30 seconds exactly. 1920 × 1080. 24 fps. The musical drop lands at roughly nine seconds.
The pipelineClaude, Google Flow, Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, Suno and HyperFrames, in that order.
The tools stayed largely the same.
The decisions didn’t.
05 · What changed
Same bones. Completely different voice.
The easiest way to see the difference is to put the two films beside each other.
| Compared | Fizzy Pop! | Fizola |
|---|---|---|
| Tagline | Open loud. | Turn on the sunshine. |
| The idea | The can is the only colour on a grey street. Open it and the colour comes back. | The same basic idea, but warmer and more nostalgic. A cold can on the step brings Maple Street back to life. |
| Juno’s look | Sunflower-yellow tee, cherry-red shorts, cherry scrunchie. | Harvest-gold collared top, light-wash flares, white high-tops, burnt-orange scrunchie. |
| Music | 1970s TV jingle crossed with modern funk-pop. | 1970s funk, soul and disco. |
| Tempo | 116 BPM | 112 BPM |
| Hook | “Fizzy Pop, Fizzy Pop!” | “Fi-zo-la, Fizola!” |
| Signature sounds | Gang vocals, handclaps, glockenspiel, whistle, brass stabs. | Clavinet, cowbell, congas, disco strings, horn stabs. |
| Opening | Sleepy, half-time intro followed by one beat of silence. | The hook is muffled, as though it’s playing somewhere down the block. |
| The drop | A real can crack lands inside the silence. | No can crack. The band enters directly on the wave. |
| On-screen words | REAL CHERRY · WILD FIZZ · SUPER CHILL | ICE COLD! · REFRESHING! · SUPER CHILL |
| Sticker | Every sip, a little party. | A party in every sip. |
| Shots | 10 | 9 |
| Edit rounds | Three major passes. | Four versions over two days. |
| Mix loudness | Around −18.5 LUFS | Around −15 LUFS |
| Finishes | Two: graphics with shadows and shadow-free. | One: every graphic uses a drop shadow. |
The important part isn’t that one version has ten shots and the other has nine.
It’s that the same production constraints produced two different creative personalities.
06 · The numbers
Thirty seconds. Two very different rhythms.
The differences become surprisingly clear when reduced to numbers.
Shots in the ad
Fizzy Pop!10
Fizola9
Tempo
Fizzy Pop!116 BPM
Fizola112 BPM
Full song
Fizzy Pop!68 s
Fizola90 s
Mix loudness
Fizzy Pop!−18.5
Fizola−15
Thirty seconds, shot by shot
Each block represents one shot. Fizola spends more time on fewer images. The cold-can push, for example, runs four seconds instead of two. The separate tab-pull shot disappears completely. That sounds like a small editorial decision. It changes the feel of the entire commercial.
Fizzy Pop!FizolaDashed line: the music drop
How much of each song makes the final cut?
Both songs were written as complete pieces, but the commercials use only their strongest 30 seconds. The edits keep the opening and first chorus, then jump forward to the ending. The verse doesn’t survive the cut. So the information that doesn’t fit in the music moves into the graphics instead. What the ear doesn’t get, the eye gets.
Fizzy Pop!FizolaSolid: used in the ad · Lighter: rest of the song
A note on tempo. The songs are only four BPM apart. They don’t sound four BPM apart. That’s because tempo isn’t doing all the work. Arrangement is.
Fizzy Pop opens sleepy and half-time before exploding into handclaps, gang vocals and glockenspiel. Fizola settles into a looser disco groove built around clavinet, cowbell, congas, strings and horns.
Same decade. Different energy.
07 · The pipeline
Same machine. Different decisions.
Every stage was directed by a person and executed with AI-assisted tools. The pipeline stayed consistent across both films. The creative direction did not.
| Stage | Tool |
|---|---|
| Shot planning, lyrics, prompts, assembly | Claude (Anthropic) |
| Reference imagery and keyframes | Google Flow |
| Motion | Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash |
| Music | Suno |
| Compositing, graphics, mix, render | HyperFrames (open source) |
There was no camera crew. No studio. No traditional editing timeline.
But that doesn’t mean there was no production process. Every generated clip was evaluated, trimmed and often regenerated.
- A warped logo gets cut.
- A disappearing ice cube gets cut.
- A strange crowd gets removed.
- A character’s hair changes halfway through a shot? Start later.
- A shot almost works? Generate it again.
The working rule was simple: Cut it. Change it. Re-render it.
The technology generates possibilities. The director decides which ones survive.
The project
Fizzy Pop and Fizola are fictional brands created as production demonstrations. The brands, products, logos, music and commercials are original creations.
The project explores what happens when traditional creative direction is applied to an AI-assisted production workflow.
The interesting part isn’t that AI made the images. It’s what happens when someone treats those images like raw production material.
08 · The Japanese version
プシュッと あけよう。
Fizzy Pop goes Japanese.
A 30-second commercial is a structure, not a language. So I rebuilt Fizzy Pop as a Japanese TV-commercial jingle: same bones, completely different voice.
The Japanese version keeps the exact architecture of the English song. Sleepy half-time intro. One beat of silence. The full-band drop. The shout-back verse. The “little party” line. One horn stab to close.
Watch the Japanese version up top ↑
The song
Bright, funky J-pop summer cola jingle at about 117 BPM, sung entirely in Japanese. Punchy funk-pop groove with slap bass, choppy wah guitar, tight brass stabs, handclaps and a sparkly city-pop shine. Cheerful female lead vocal with very clear Japanese diction, plus a group shouting the call-and-response words back.
The brand hook lands on “フィジーポップ” (fee-jee-pop). And the slogan “プシュッと あけよう！” does real work: pushu is the Japanese sound of a can opening, so it functions as the Japanese version of “Open loud.”
Writing lyrics a machine can sing
The lyrics are written mostly in kana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet, rather than kanji. Suno pronounces every word correctly when it can sound each one out. Kanji readings are ambiguous. Kana is not.
What the lines mean:
| Japanese | Sounds like | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| なんだか たいくつな ごご… | nan-da-ka tai-ku-tsu-na go-go | Kind of a boring afternoon… |
| だから プシュッと あけよう | da-ka-ra pu-shu-tto a-ke-yō | So let’s crack one open |
| チェリーコーラ プシュッと あけて | che-rī kō-ra pu-shu-tto a-ke-te | Cherry cola, crack it open |
| なつの みんなで もりあがれ | na-tsu-no min-na-de mo-ri-a-ga-re | Everybody get the summer party going |
| ほんものチェリー！ | hon-mo-no che-rī | Real cherry! |
| シュワシュワ！ | shu-wa shu-wa | Fizz fizz! |
| キンキン ひえて ちょうチル！ | kin-kin hi-e-te chō chi-ru | Ice cold, super chill! |
| これが なつでしょ！ | ko-re-ga na-tsu-de-sho | This is what summer is! |
| ひとくちごとに ちいさな パーティー | hi-to-ku-chi-go-to-ni chī-sa-na pā-tī | Every sip’s a little party |
| プシュッと あけよう！ | pu-shu-tto a-ke-yō | Pop it open! (the “Open loud” line) |
Cutting the B version
The Japanese B version uses the same shots as the English cut, re-edited to the new song. A Japanese speech recognizer transcribed the vocal, and every on-screen word was timed to what she actually sings.
- On-screen words switch to Japanese: “ほんものチェリー！”, “シュワシュワ！”, “キンキン！”, “ちょうチル”, each bouncing in on the beat.
- The end-card slogan appears as it is sung: “プシュッと あけよう！”
- The Fizzy Pop logo stays in English, the way it does on real Japanese packaging.
- Product line and fine print are fully Japanese: “355mL缶・キンキンに冷やして” and “スペックCM。フィジーポップは架空のブランドです。”
One honest note: Suno didn’t render the one-beat silence before the drop in this take, so the drop lands straight after “あけよう”. The cut follows the song as delivered.
Meet the director
David Martin
Creative Director · North Vancouver, BC
I invented both colas, built their worlds, directed their songs and cut both commercials.
Making the same brief twice was the point. It forced me to separate the things that belonged to the production system from the things that belonged to the creative idea.
I’ve spent 15+ years working across video, content, brand, technology and business. In 2006 I founded DJC Media, an independent studio where I direct every discipline in-house, with more than a quarter billion views across the work.
Today, I use AI as part of the production crew. Not as the director.
The idea, the taste and the final cut stay with me.