VCCP puts Jelly Babies and Wine Gums in a seriously life-threatening situation in a new campaign that turns lifts into a satisfying game of sweet-based roulette.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect to write about a new ad campaign involving lifts and sweeties on a Tuesday morning. But what can I say? I’m a big fan of Jelly Babies. This VCCP takeover for Maynards Bassetts features lift doors at shopping centres across the UK, with a giant Jelly Baby or Wine Gum printed on the right-hand door and a menacing wall of deadly spikes on the left.
It’s the latest instalment of ‘Set the Juice Loose’, a long-running platform created by the global agency, which has already won at the Campaign Big Awards and Creative Circle Awards, and topped Campaign magazine’s Best Outdoor list in 2023. This next chapter comes from VCCP’s Fran Barona and Lizzie Eastwood, working alongside creative directors Elias Torres and Daniel Glover-James. I like to think they were inspired by our own menacing childhood, where we would talk to the Jelly Babies as if they were our victims, entice them with soft whisperings and then bite their heads off in one satisfying chomp. Nom nom. Or was that just me?
Either way, the lifts are now live across Brent Cross, Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, and Watford, where shoppers can witness the sweet treats face their potential doom as the doors close. “We love putting our Jelly Babies and Wine Gums in precarious situations,” says David Masterman, executive creative director at VCCP. “There’s something joyous about watching the lift doors close and seeing a Jelly Baby inch closer to a wall of spikes. It creates a lovely moment of tension whilst you imagine exactly what’s about to happen.”
I was curious whether there’s anything deeply psychological about all this, and I discovered there’s something researchers call ‘cute aggression’. In 2015, psychologists at Yale (Rebecca Dyer and Oriana Aragón) studied the weird, near-universal desire to squeeze, pinch, or playfully “eat up” adorable things. Their theory is that it’s “dimorphous expression”. What the hell is that, I hear you ask. It’s when the brain is flooded with overwhelming positive feelings that it releases that pressure by producing a bit of the opposite. It’s the same as crying at weddings or laughing at funerals. Basically, Jelly Babies are so damn cute that we want to kill them. Or, in my case, bite their heads off. It’s an odd act of affection. Bet you didn’t expect to learn that today.
The lifts are backed by a nationwide out-of-home push featuring last year’s posters (‘Corkscrew’, ‘Juicer’ and ‘Blender’) in which kitchen utensils loom threateningly close to the sweets in question. Quite horrific, but we love it.
The campaign runs across OOH and social until the end of September, with media planning and buying by Publicis Media UK. How do you eat your Jelly Baby? With care and attention, all in one go, or do you torture the little bastard and eat it slowly, like me?
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