Mud\Wtr uses dance to gracefully highlight its healthy beverage blends

Health beverage brand Mud\Wtr’s latest campaign positions its drink blends as an aid for those establishing healthier daily habits as part of their New Year’s resolutions. And the brand is using an unconventional medium to communicate this—dance.

On Jan. 1, Mud\Wtr kicked off its “Healthy Habits for Healthy Minds” campaign across its social media channels, showing how consumers can incorporate Mud\Wtr’s drink blends, which contain adaptogens—plants and mushrooms thought to help reduce stress—into their daily routine. Six videos were produced in partnership between MUD Films, Mud\Wtr’s in-house media arm, and creative agency Little Bear Studios.

Each presents a scenario marred by unhealthy habits, such as drinking too much coffee in the morning, before comparing how the same situation would play out if the person had instead consumed a Mud\Wtr beverage. But rather than use straightforward acting to demonstrate these scenarios, the brand tapped professional dancer and choreographer Micaela Taylor to highlight the before-and-after of Mud\Wtr products through dance. 

For example, in the primary campaign video, a four-minute spot titled “Change Your Mind with Mud\Wtr,” Taylor acts out a common yet unhealthy daily routine: guzzling coffee throughout the day, spending the evening overstimulated by social media, and struggling to fall asleep at the end of the day.

Dancers Madi Tanguay and Austin Tyson follow her throughout the day, with the three conveying the anxiety and stress in Taylor’s day with frenetic, jerky movements.

“That’s no way to live,” the voiceover, by comedian and musician Daniel Koren, comments. “But still, that’s how we go.”

When the day is repeated, with the coffee and sleeping pills replaced by Mud\Wtr beverages, the trio’s dancing becomes graceful and confident. “That’s what Mud\Wtr’s all about: products you can build healthy habits around," says the VO.

The series includes shorter spots focused on each of Mud\Wtr’s four beverage blends, such as one starring dancer and model Floyd Slayweather shifting from shaking due to overcaffeination to joyfully dancing after drinking the brand’s matcha. 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Floyd Slayweather (@floydslayweather)

 
“Hustle culture has sold us on the idea that we’re only as good as our ability to go, go, go,” one of the captions on YouTube reads. “So, we rush through the day on autopilot—mindlessly guzzling coffee to get going, working through lunch, zoning out to screens in the evening, and tossing and turning at night. It’s no wonder we’re in a mental-health epidemic.”

The mental-health message conveyed in Mud\Wtr’s campaign has already resonated with thousands of consumers. In three weeks, the video series has earned a collective 50,000 views on YouTube and over 70,000 on Instagram, and the brand sold over 1.1 million servings of its beverage blends in the first two weeks of January alone.