Pocari Sweat's 'Find Your Own Way' sends a girl running against the tide — ADFEST Grande

In spring 2021, Otsuka and Dentsu wanted to refresh Pocari Sweat's message for young people after COVID-19: instead of selling hydration, give the 40-year-old sports drink a belief — individualism, finding your own way.

Reframe Pocari Sweat as a brand of individualism: a film where a girl runs her own way through a warping, wind-torn world, built with practical effects and no CG.

Dentsu cast 15-year-old Sena Nakajima from about 400 auditions and built an 85-metre moving set; in the 60-second film she runs against her classmates' flow while floors undulate, walls tear and petals storm at her — all shot practically, with the catchphrase 'Reach out your hand. It will reach. Sweat carries me.'

The film swept craft awards: ADFEST 2022 Film Craft Lotus Grande, Cannes Lions 2022 Bronze for production design, a D&AD Yellow Pencil, One Show Gold and MAD STARS 2022 Gold; the making-of footage, showing the impossible set was real, proved the no-CG claim.

In spring 2021, Otsuka Pharmaceutical's Pocari Sweat — Japan's best-known sports drink since 1980 — faced a marketing problem. Its message about hydration and sweat felt old to young people emerging from a year of COVID, so Otsuka and Dentsu set out to rebuild the brand around a new belief: individualism, the courage to find your own way.

The result was a 60-second film, 'But I Saw You' (Demo Kimi ga Mieta), that opens with a schoolgirl trudging in the same direction as everyone around her, then stopping and sprinting the other way. As she runs, reality warps: the hallway floor undulates to trip her, gale-force wind tears the walls to tatters and debris flies at her face — a visual metaphor for how hard forging your own path is.

None of it was computer graphics. Dentsu built an 85-metre moving set with real peaks and valleys, and 15-year-old Sena Nakajima — chosen from about 400 auditioning high-schoolers in January — ran through it while set and camera did the magic; the only digital touch was removing harnesses for one levitation shot. The catchphrase: 'Reach out your hand. It will reach. Sweat carries me.'

The film won the ADFEST 2022 Film Craft Lotus Grande for production design, plus a Cannes Lions 2022 Bronze, D&AD Yellow Pencil, One Show Gold Pencil and MAD STARS 2022 Gold, and the making-of video spread the story of how it was done.

Turning a drink's function — rehydration for effort — into a statement about individualism gave young people a belief to feel rather than a benefit to remember.

The no-CG craft made the message true: if the impossible visuals were physically built, then 'running your own way is hard but real' felt honest.

Casting an unknown 15-year-old from an open audition made the heroine the audience herself, not a celebrity endorsing the brand.

The timing matched the moment: April 2021, Japan's new school and work year after COVID, with the line 'the wind pushing you back becomes the wind at your back.'

A utility drink can be sold as a belief: dramatize the feeling the brand stands for, and let craft be the proof — building the impossible set for real made 'be yourself' feel true.

Otsuka kept the heroine and the world: a sequel, 'But My Heart Shook' (Demo Kokoro ga Yureta), aired from 3 July 2021, layering the girl's inner conflict onto the same running motif with the message 'even while hesitating, move forward toward the self you should be.' Production house Spoon logged the work across Cannes, D&AD, One Show, ADFEST, Spikes, CICLOPE, CRESTA, MAD STARS and ACC awards, and 'Find Your Own Way' became a recurring platform phrase for the brand.