Ben Stiller and Guy Shelmerdine Put Absurdist Spin on Retro Soda Ads for Stiller’s Soda

While celebrity ventures into alcohol brands show no sign of slowing, Ben Stiller is choosing a softer serve with Stiller’s Soda, a nostalgically inspired, 30-calorie soft drink. To launch the brand, the actor has teamed up with SMUGGLER director Guy Shelmerdine on a delightfully absurd spin on nostalgic soda ads of yesteryear.

Titled ‘Introducing Stiller’s Soda’, the film sees Stiller play a straight-laced spokesperson whose sincere product pitch quickly derails into an absurd battle of wills. His delivery is repeatedly undercut by a mysterious ASMR-style whisper – voiced by Justin Theroux – that turns the retro ad setup into an enjoyably strange back-and-forth. 4. Drawing on the neon glow and slow-motion glamour of old soda spots, Guy and Ben transform nostalgia into a surreal, tongue-in-cheek parody.

Speaking with LBB, Guy says the creative idea originated with Ben’s vision for the brand and was supported by a team he brought together including voiceover star Justin as a creative advisor and Sean Clements, one of Ben’s writing Partners, who were joined later by Lake Buckley and David Ebert, creative directors who originally pitched the whisper concept.

“From the beginning, it had that retro DNA baked in, and we leaned into it, right down to the idea of shooting slow-motion product pours,” says Guy. “A big part of the brief was: ‘Let’s sell this drink like your thirst is a life-or-death situation.’ So we leaned into those over-the-top tropes: gleaming cans, exploding citrus, hands bursting through ice.”

That said, they didn’t want it to feel like a full-on spoof. From the jump Ben wanted to bring back that sense of nostalgia but make it work for today, something that Guy feels is reflected in the concept and execution. “The trick was keeping one foot in the past and one in today, so it feels nostalgic but still tongue-in-cheek fresh,” he says.

To bring that vision to life, Guy and the team dug into the vaults of old soda ads – Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, you name it. “The bigger the hair and the bubblier the liquid, the better,” he jokes. “But instead of copying them outright, we stitched the vibe together into our own strange little universe.”

As the founder and face of the brand, Guy and his team wanted Ben to come across like the “consummate professional pitchman” – smiling earnestly, hitting his marks – while chaos erupts around him. “The comedy works because Ben plays it straight,” says Guy. “That tension between sincerity and absurdity is where the humour lives. Ben’s timing is annoyingly good, so my main job was not to laugh and ruin the take.”

Justin Theroux was originally intended to be a stand-in for the voiceover, a disembodied commentator poking at Ben. “But then we thought,” adds Guy, “‘Why don’t we actually shoot him with Ben?’ Suddenly we had this incredible actor crouched behind a monitor, whispering sweet nonsense into Ben’s ear like a deranged meditation app. We styled him a bit like the mysterious DJ in The Warriors – mostly lips, hypnotic in a slightly unsettling way.”

They did rehearsals so Ben could feel the rhythm, then on set Justin fed him curveballs live, which created “brilliant awkward pauses and authentic reactions”. The final magic, though, came from Guy’s editor. Andy McGraw at Cartel. “He has a forensic sense of comic timing – he knows the exact frame where to cut a deadpan look for maximum effect.”

As playful as the finished film feels, Guy says pulling off that balance of sincerity and absurdity was far from simple. “People have seen a million parody ads,” he says. “It’s a crowded space. My way through was to ground the chaos in actual craft. We had Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux – two icons who don’t exactly spend their days doing soda commercials – so it already felt like an event. Then we layered in proper production value: ridiculously expensive lenses with '80s filters, lighting, VFX polish. The straighter you present the absurdity, the funnier it gets.”

That mix of high-end craft and surreal humour is also what keeps the nostalgia from feeling stale. “Nostalgia is basically a cinematic comfort blanket,” says Guy. “The way to keep it fresh is to use nostalgia as the wrapper, and then slip in something absurd – like Justin whispering soda ASMR into Ben’s ear. That mix of familiarity and surprise is what makes it work.”

One of his favourite parts of the process was working with veteran tabletop director Steve Romano, “who still shoots products the old-fashioned way,” says Guy. “Water tanks, turntables, the whole analogue bag of tricks. Then we handed it all to Preymaker, who cranked the absurdity to 11. The result was this odd but beautiful hybrid of old-school craft and modern polish.

Guy describes the process with Ben as “gloriously collaborative”, operating more like a comedy writers’ room than a traditional ad production. “We had table reads, improv sessions, and ‘what if?’ rabbit holes that sometimes went nowhere but often gave us gems to build on.

“It was a real dream to work with Ben,” adds Guy. “Especially on something so personal for him.”

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