A new spot from Rave Films for Coca-Cola titled ‘Pond’ hits its Canadian adult audience with nostalgia, sympathy and pride – and it even may even make you thirsty.

The commercial, helmed by veteran director Bill Irish, is the product of Cossette Toronto creative team Tim Tobias (copywriter) and Edd Baptista (art director). It follows a group of children on a winter’s day marching together through the snow, armed with shovels and hockey sticks. There is a little girl, obviously younger and smaller than the other kids, wandering behind them, feeling left out of the fun. Once at their destination, the kids shovel off a frozen pond, preparing for a hockey game. When the pond is clear, they all brake for (you guessed it) a Coke. All except the little girl that is, who, still feeling unwanted, begins to wander away. The natural leader of the group, a friendly and sympathetic chap, grabs a Coke and gives it to the girl.

The next scene finds the little girl standing in between two hockey teams facing each other ready for battle and looking proud. She begins to sing O’ Canada, thus finding her place within the group.

‘It’s about an authentic Canadian moment,’ says Tobias. ‘We were asked to portray an authentic Canadian moment as relates to hockey.’

Tobias and Baptista developed the spot based on those guidelines. They agreed that Irish would be the right man for this job.

‘Bill Irish is one of our favorites based on his history,’ Tobias explains. ‘He has proven himself to be a very strong visual storyteller and this is a visual story.’

Ken Eggett, executive producer at Rave, says he received the first boards for the spot while in London.

‘I recognized immediately, to use a phrase that Bill Irish uses sparingly, they were absolutely delicious,’ says Eggett. ‘I knew Bill would like these and they were right up his alley.’

Director Irish says the spots did excite him immediately and the ideas even took him back a few years.

‘The ideas were very accurate to my youth, people of my generation,’ says Irish. ‘I sat down and did a quick storyboard to show them as clearly as possible what my version of this might be. On the front of the storyboard I drew my own shins covered with two Eaton’s catalogues I used to use – I was the goalie.’

The spot called for a cold trek to Whitehorse, where on the coldest shooting day temperatures dipped to 41 below. Three of the dozen or so young people (a mix of children from Vancouver and Whitehorse) were showing signs of frostbite at one point and were seen to by locals used to treating people overcome by the cold. Irish reports shooting was done in 10-minute installments – they would shoot for 10 minutes and then run into the tents to get warm. This went on for most of the four-day shoot.

To avoid the cameras and equipment freezing up, Irish says they were left in the cold overnight to get used to the weather.

‘If you take a camera from inside out in the cold it immediately frosts up inside with all the condensation,’ he explains. ‘You avoid that by keeping everything cold, which is very hard on the batteries, so you need a continuous run of batteries. The people I went with knew about working in cold weather and we didn’t have a camera stoppage once.’

Another challenge of the shoot was getting an appropriate amount of daylight. Irish says there were only six hours of daylight at a time, with only two-and-a-half hours of actual sunshine.

‘It was very difficult to shoot,’ says Irish. ‘You’d frequently find yourself roaring from one shoot location to another because those are the two wide shots you needed sunlight in. It was technically a difficult shoot.’

Because Irish had virtually lived this very spot to some degree, Eggett cannot imagine any other director having directed ‘Pond’ as well.

‘Bill remembers as a child shoveling ice and the whole Canadiana aspect of it many of us have lived,’ says Eggett. ‘He’s a Canadian and this is a real Canadian moment. A guy from l.a. wouldn’t have had the same sensitivity about the spot – Bill has lived what the spot is about.’

With all the talk of filmmaking and Canadiana, one almost forgets there was a client involved. Cossette’s account director, Neil Buchanan, says the folks at Coke are enamored with the ad. Tobias confirms, saying all involved consider this a true Coke spot, in the tradition of the Hilltops spot, the Polar Bears and even Mean Joe Green.

‘Mean Joe you can’t pass,’ director Irish laughs. ‘You can pull up behind Mean Joe but you can’t pass him. [‘Pond’] is going to do what we set out to do.’ He modestly adds, ‘I had very little to do with its success, whereas the people I worked with had a great deal to do with its success.’

dop on ‘Pond’ was John Houtman, agency producer was Bev Cornish and the editing was handled by Mick Griffin at Flashcut.

Buchanan says the spot first aired in Whitehorse, on Dec. 27, as a thank-you to its community.