Ocean Spray is aiming to "power up" America's holiday food offering this year with a hilariously quirky new campaignt hat sees a family erupt into dance moves after being transfixed by some wobbly, jiggly cranberry jelly.

The spot is the brand's first work from Orchard, formerly Lightning Orchard, under the creative helm of its recently appointed chief creative officer David Kolbusz. It opens on a family sitting around the Thanksgiving table in somewhat tense, stultified silence, all dressed in beige and looking totally bored. The only sound is the ticking of a clock. Then, the father enters the room carrying three jiggling logs of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce. Everyone starts to wiggle and jiggle in time with the jelly (and the soundtrack), subtly at first but then eventually into some full-on headbanging. The tagline is "Power your holidays." It features a bespoke track created by Mack Goudy Jr. of the electronic dance group: The Detroit Grand Pubahs, which will also be released on Spotify.

As well as the TV and digital spots, social and digital extensions of the campaign aim to invite people to "jiggle with" Ocean Spray, including dancing with a wobbling jelly on TikTok.

The idea is that cranberry, often the only bright red food in a spread of beige potatoes and casseroles, can liven up the holiday food offering. 

“Ocean Spray and cranberries have provided the punch on holiday tables for over a century and we want people to see with new eyes, the power within the cranberry that we and our growers know so well,” said Dan Hamilton, head of marketing at Ocean Spray Cranberries. “We hope people will feel the joy from Ocean Spray this holiday season. What better way to do that than the joy of watching the iconic jiggle of our jellied cranberry sauce?”

“There’s something hypnotic and captivating about watching jelly jiggle. It’s hard to be mad when you see it. We took that truth and followed it to its illogical conclusion," said David Kolbusz, chief creative officer at Orchard. 

The spot benefits from some spot-on casting and visual aesthetics. Kolbusz commmented that: "Aesthetics were very important to casting but not as important as their ability to move. The actors we picked all need to be able to jiggle and wiggle in a way that was convincingly erratic.  A couple of them are legit dancers. Others were amateurs. This was important. If all of them had been professional dancers it would’ve looked too choreographed. If none of them had been pros it probably would’ve been messy. There was a lovely symbiotic relationship between the trained and untrained performers. It was pretty intense and demanding, having to move like that without the benefit of any post. Everyone did a great job and kept in good spirits in spite of the physical gauntlet we imposed upon them.”