The Barbarian Group Keeps Things Weird in Integrated Campaign for Brisk

By Patrick Coffee 

Brisk iced tea wants to send a message to consumers: it’s edgy. It’s a little odd. As the tagline goes, it’s “Kinda Out There.”

The brand has been reinforcing that point throughout 2015 with the help of a cast of cartoonish characters and its agency partner The Barbarian Group. Those characters include, for example, SarcophaCan–which hides the body of a zombie lemon.

The target audience for this ongoing initiative is clear: they’re relatively young, they like their content unconventional, and they find Honest Tea and Tazo super freaking boring.

Recent executions courting these consumers have included a real-life delivery service based in Brooklyn and run by some of the same characters. From February:

Later in the year, there was an event at SXSW in which Bernie the Shark hung out with Jimmy Kimmel’s former parking lot security guard, Guillermo (though you won’t find him in the subsequent video). This summer, the brand also created some short cartoons set to the music of up-and-coming music-making people in partnership with VICE and Animation Domination High-Def as well as launching a totally new, totally radical tumblr site.

In other words, they’ve got the market saturated.

The latest work in the “Kinda Out There” campaign is this supercut of the digital video content that Barbarian has produced for the client to showcase its cast of zany characters.

We’re not exactly sure where these shorts first appeared (assuming they were pre-roll?) but watching them in sequence is a bit like fast-forwarding through an episode of Robot Chicken with some chemical assistance.

The point was definitely made, though: Brisk is waaaay trendier than Snapple.

Credits

Agency: The Barbarian Group
Edu Pou, Chief Creative Officer
Stephen Petronis, Associate Creative Director
Tucker Loosbrock, Senior Copywriter
Alex Schaeffer, Copywriter
Abbas Deidehban, Art Director
Caelin Cacciatore, Designer
Danielle Zeisler, Designer
Alex Lang, Designer
Nalina Baratz, Senior Producer
David Chester, Associate Producer
Kim Jimenez, Senior Media & Distribution Lead
Vanessa Cagno, Community Manager
Sherri Chambers, Head of Account Management
Sunchia Eckert, Account Executive
Felix Yip, Senior Strategy Director
Rachel Thompson, Junior Strategist

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