Studio Yukiko pairs 90s visuals with AI to dial up the dystopia for Nobell Foods

Fancy a pizza off the Nevada coast? If this invite doesn’t sound right to you (“But Nevada’s landlocked?”, we hear you say), then it’s having the desired effect. This strange proposal sits at the core of dairy-free cheese company Nobell Food’s Pizza Futures – a forecast report on climate change’s potential impact on pizza. In an ad to promote the forecast, Studio Yukiko have dialled up the cheesiness while adding healthy sprinkling of dystopia to present the argument for climate action in a way that you probably haven’t seen before.

Pizza Futures might sound like a bit of an absurd concept; the coast of Nevada existing underwater, with an entrepreneur offering sunken pizzeria scuba tours, but it’s intentionally so. “It’s becoming too easy for the horrors of climate change to be normalised, boring, accepted stories in our newsfeeds,” says a statement from Nobell Foods. “It’s why we were so fascinated by cognitive dissonance as a creative technique. Creative that completely shakes our understanding of reality, and forces us to stop scrolling and start thinking.”

The physical report was designed by Studio Fisk, and then the team at Nobell turned to Yukiko for the ad. The project was a no-brainer for Yukiko. It resonated with their values, tackling important issues of today, but in a way that resonated with the creative agency – with humour. “We saw an opportunity to do what we do best: play around with expressive typography and flexing our After Effects limbs with some fun animation, whilst also drawing attention to urgent climate issues,” says Johannes Conrad, Yukiko co-founder and creative director.

As a springboard (or diving board) for inspiration, the Yukiko team took a journey to the 90s, “when water related sports and activities were at their cultural zenith,” says Johannes. For this, they leant into candy coloured tie-dye and “poppy” visuals that hark back to a time when extreme sport and endurance programmes were a common occurrence on daytime TV – think BBC’s They Who Dare, or Nickelodeon’s Guts. This was helped along by an “erratic” selection of typefaces – some found and some custom-designed – that feature in the ad as well as a kitsch sticker selection of the “funtivities” you can get involved with in this very wet dystopia. What really brings it all together, however, is Yukiko’s animated sketches, which enhance the cheesy nostalgia, reflecting the wobbly video transitions you came to expect when changing the channel on your box TV or swapping one VHS for another.

But to really get across the feeling of impending “dystopia”, Yukiko turned to AI – a tool that already strikes fear into your average creative. As is expected, AI helped to create scenes that would have been harder to execute with your standard shoot. “Advertising the Nevada coastline is deeply disturbing and utilising AI throughout we felt helped to double down on that,” says Johannes. “The AI-generated images by nature imperfectly create humans and situations that we felt subconsciously added to that dissonance.”

The uncanny cherry on top is the copywriting and voiceover, for which Yukiko drew inspiration from 80s and 90s vacation advertisements, known for their hyperbole and upscaling to prove this holiday is one you really can’t miss. “Combining this tone with what was a future where California was underwater fused something familiar and absurd, with something very unfamiliar and very absurd,” says Johannes. Safe to say, no one’s going to be packing their bags for this resort in a hurry.