SodaStream Goes Anti-Plastic With Rod Stewart In Latest Campaign

SodaStream thinks clean water is sexy and in their bid to rid the oceans of plastic waste, they’ve enlisted the help of Sir Rod Stewart. The message is simple: using SodaStream reduces the sheer amount of plastic bottles, many of which aren’t recycled and ultimately make it into the ocean.

The animated/live-action ad depicts a beverage company celebrating the billions of bottled water they sell in a fancy boardroom.The ad then cuts to a group of young Coachella-ready festival-goer-stand-ins harmoniously singing atop a mountain of plastic. It’s an obvious callback to the groundbreaking classic “Hilltop” commercial where they sing “I’d like to buy the world a coke.” This time out, however, the message isn’t about global peace, it’s about  living in harmony with ocean fauna, like seagulls, seals and penguins, which at various points in the commercial are bothered by plastic trash, usually in a dark, comedic way—a seagull coughs up a plastic cap, and penguins scurry about with a 6-pack ring around their necks.

And then the crowd of singers parts and emerging from the throng comes Rod Stewart as an animated sea turtle sporting something resembling his signature blonde bouffant being carried by Icelandic strongman Thor Bjornsson, known for playing “The Mountain” on HBO’s Game of Thrones, because hey, we’re on a mountain of plastic in the middle of the ocean.

Ultimately this group of young people bursts into the boardroom, where Turtle Rod and the gang make the pitch for using SodaStream—their reusable bottle is the equivalent to 2,000 single-use ones and you can make your water bubbly—instead of the evil bottled water company’s product, which is labeled “litter” in the ad.

SodaStream was recently acquired by PepsiCo, and while they sell bottled water and flavored water under several brands, including Aquafina, LIFEWTR, SoBe and Propel, the company has made efforts and commitments towards operating more sustainably and reducing the amount of plastic they use. They have set a target of designing 100% of all their packaging to be recoverable or recyclable by 2025, and SodaStream is very much a step towards that goal.