Rustlers’ Taste Fantasy Waltzes in a Mouth Ballroom

​‘Oh My Rustlers’ is a bold new integrated campaign by Droga5 London, part of Accenture Song, for the convenience burger brand. Running across digital, outdoor, and radio, the campaign’s hero is the Alex Southam-directed film, via RASCAL. It set the tone of the campaign: a little bit surreal, a touch absurd, and funny too, as present across all of the campaign’s messaging and its cross-medium executions.

“We wanted to lean into the fact that Rustlers makes everyday life a bit more enjoyable,” says Droga5 London's creative director, Ed Redgrave, of the client brief. “Obviously, burgers are never going to be a daily meal choice – they’re an indulgent treat – but when you have one, they just hit different to any other food. I don’t care if you’re lobster thermidor marinaded in the nectar of the gods; when the mood strikes, only a burger will do. ‘Oh My Rustlers’ is a campaign that brings to life this unrivalled moment of unfiltered indulgence.”

The agency team really wanted to capture and communicate “this feeling of unfiltered indulgence that only a burger can truly provide.” And they weren’t afraid to get silly to make the message known. “Across the campaign, whether that’s a surreal dance sequence after that first bite, a giant mouth in our OOH to showcase the big taste, or a booming track in our radio (so that you’ve got beef on the brain) aim to bring about the euphoria and glorification of the Rustlers experience as a joyful moment in an otherwise ordinary day,” Ed says.

Of the decision to lean into a surreal and absurd tone for the film – which felt unexpected and fresh for the product category – Ed says, “If there’s one rule in advertising, it’s don’t be boring.”

And boring this film definitely isn’t. One bite of a Rustlers’ burger transports a couple from their ordinary kitchen into a ‘mouth ballroom’ which the viewer enters through, as you may have guessed, a mouth. There, among sumptuous red velvet, they’re locked in a classic dance – a metaphor for the satisfaction of a burger craving – while a chorus chants ‘beef’ over and over.

The Droga5 team chose RASCAL’s Alex Southam to direct because he “immediately ‘got it’. We’d spoken all along about a burger being an indulgent treat. He started talking about David Lynch and indulgent filmmaking and then we were away. I’m convinced it’s no coincidence the gramophone man sort of looks like Lynch, actually,” says Ed.

Alex says the brief “had a clear creative through line, some suitably idiosyncratic references that chimed with me and a clear and unwavering desire to make something that felt, for want of a better word – odd.” To him, it was “kind of a perfect brief.”

He was keen to set and establish the film’s tone early in pre-production to ensure everyone involved was on the same page. “During the casting, I was determined to find actors that understood the approach so that, come shoot day, they were suitably prepared for the absurdity and series of bizarre requests I was going to throw at them.

“In order to avoid falling into any hammy performances we kept things simple on the shoot day – our ‘real world’ moments should feel natural(ish) and low key, whereas in the ‘mouth ballroom’ everything was to be played completely po-faced. We then lent into that dynamic hard and would constantly change things up between takes,” says Alex.

“The goal is always to surprise and entertain, leaving the viewer with the feeling it was, at the very least, worth a moment of their time. Alex, the director, brought a really interesting Lynchian vibe to the script that dialled up that surrealness. And we immediately fell in love,” Ed explains.

The dialogue and the wry copy complement and add to the film’s tone. But how did the team know that they had pushed it far enough? “It’s an age-old question, ‘How far is too far?’ The answer is always ‘Never!’ You want to go WAY beyond where you think the line is,” Ed says, adding, “then take a breather and keep going further. It will naturally get pulled back along the way anyway. And you just hope you end up somewhere on the right side of entertaining.” It really is worth watching until the end to get an update on what happens to the film’s characters.

Mouths are the central visual element of the campaign alongside the idea of “not being able to hold back when you have a burger in front of you.” For the OOH, the team pushed it to the extreme with absurdly oversized mouths hungering for a bite. “We wanted the idea to land in a fresh way in each medium, making sure we weren’t creating an ad for an ad by making the assets all match in concept. But matching their surrealism. As well as creating something clean and simple to land the tone of the ‘Oh My Rustlers’ idea,” says Ed.

As for the radio ads, Ed says “all good radio needs to be really simple. What’s the sound of something tasty good in your mouth? Well, people say, it’s like a party, so we did that. Which turned out to be pretty fun.”
One challenge the Droga5 team encountered was creating choreography that was both good and funny. “On set we would get lost watching the dancers perform, then stop and remind ourselves, okay how do we get a laugh here? Also we had a shoe break on set,” Ed recalls.

From a production perspective, budget and time were a challenge, says Alex, since “neither of which were in abundance.” Once the shoot location, the Rovoli Ballroom, was secured however “we could build our approach. Having the legendary Barnes (RASCAL’s ECD, Andrew ‘Barnsley' Wood) on board solved a lot of practical and VFX issues, allowing myself and the team to really focus on the finer details.I must also give credit to production designer Jakob Carl Frederik and his team for pulling together the kitchen and ‘mouth ballroom’ set ups, a herculean task for sure.”

Alex notes how the edit helped to bring the film’s tone and visuals together, adding that working with editor Jack Singer at STITCH was a highlight of the production. “We have a very similar sense of humour and his enthusiasm for all things ‘peculiar’ is infectious.”
For Ed and the Droga5 team, the campaign was a pleasure to work on. “Rustlers are such great clients to work with. They’ve got cult fans. Great taste. Huge ambition. And continue to push us to ever bolder ideas.”

Fans of the song soundtracking the film should, Ed says, “keep eyes and ears on Rustlers’ social channels as we’re looking to do a giveaway of some custom-made vinyl of the track.”