The California Raisins ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine")
California Raisin Advisory Board1986
The California Raisins ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine") is a 1986 30-second claymation television commercial for California Raisin Advisory Board, created by Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco.
The line
I heard it through the grapevine.
Why it works
A commodity board with a boring product — dried grapes — created pop stars out of clay. FCB copywriter Seth Werner's half-joking pitch ("raisins dancing to 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine'") became, in Will Vinton's painstaking stop-motion, the coolest thing on television when it debuted on September 14, 1986. The Raisins released four albums, charted on Billboard, earned an Emmy nomination, and their clay figures are now held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The case is studied for how craft and attitude can transform the least charismatic product imaginable — and as the high-water mark of the licensed-character economy an ad campaign can generate.
Techniques
- Mascots and characters Turns dried grapes into clay pop stars with attitude, characters famous enough to release albums of their own.
- Jingles and music Dancing raisins perform I Heard It Through the Grapevine, a song whose title neatly puns on where raisins come from.
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