WATCH: RC Cola drops ad featuring playboy dentures as the star (yes, pustiso!)
In their multiverse of madness made up of the “Basta” ads, RC Cola dropped today the third installment in the trilogy of weird.
It was only a matter of time that they would use a different part of the body to feature in their ads. Or so everyone thought.
Starting with the first “Basta” ad with the kid having drinking glasses embedded in his back and his mother having an RC Cola bottle for a head, and the second featuring a band whose members have succubus eyes that dispense ice—the third is just as weird. (Watch video at the end of the story.)
The ad is to introduce the new RC Cola Qute in a 237 ml. bottle, which has additional 37 ml. from the previous 200 ml. This time, the star of the commercial is a playboy dentures named Pacquito—a talking set of false teeth in a glass of water without a body.
It’s kind of gross as Pacquito’s girlfriend picks him up from the glass and French kisses him. As always with these RC Cola ads, it will make you yell, “What the actual f*ck!!”
That was truly unexpected even if, at the back of your mind, you were expecting something strange to happen.
But playboy dentures? Who’d have thunk it?
Well, the people at Gigil did.
The creative team—composed of head writer Dionie Tañada with Beverly Lubid, Greggy Gregorio, JC Aujero and Cath Dizon—told PhilSTAR L!fe in a Zoom interview that everyone expected the next RC ad to feature another weird body part.
“People were thinking, ano naman kaya ngayon, paa?” JC said. “So we went in another direction—something outside of the body. Dentures. Pustiso.”
But first, the storyline. A girl named Sharon is in a restaurant having a romantic dinner with her boyfriend. As she takes a spoonful of her dessert, she discovers an engagement in her mouth, and her boyfriend says, “Babe, will you marry me?”
You don’t know whom she’s talking to even as you hear his suave voice. It’s deliberate suspense to build up the atmosphere, according to JC, until the camera pans to Pacquito. Tadah! Isa siyang pustiso.
“I’m excited to spend the rest of my life with you, babe,” Pacquito says, bubbling with joy in his glass of water.
“I love you, Quito,” Sharon says, going around to his side, takes him from the glass, and French kisses him.
Their two servers watching from the sides begin clapping when a meek-looking woman named Vilma walks up to their table and says, “Pacquing? Anong nangyayari dito?”
“Hala!” the waiter says, watching the scandal begin to unfold.
A third woman appears, pregnant and pushing a stroller with their baby in it, rather, baby dentures—because what else would it be? “Sinasabi ko na nga ba!” Nora says.
“I can explain,” Pacquito stammers and bubbles in his water.
Sharon throws the engagement ring at him and storms out. The waiter mutters, “Dami!” and opens a bottle of RC Cola Qute with the additional 37 ml., which is “equivalent to one gulp, two if you’re dainty.” The baby dentures begin crying in his stroller and the waiter replaces his bottle of “Colang Soda” with RC.
And that, my friends, is how the Gigil creative team has continued the multiverse of weirdness that is RC Cola’s Basta commercials.
It’s not just a matter of shocking people or their clients with the initial storyboards. This one particularly has solid characterization as seen in the 1:33-long video.
“The first girlfriend is Sharon, the second is Vilma, and the third with their baby is Nora,” says co-writer Greggy. “Sharon is the young girlfriend; Vilma is the one that has accepted Pacquito for what he is, resigned na siya; and Nora the wife is palaban, jaded.”
She adds that for the third Basta ad, “There was growing pressure to maintain or even exceed whatever hype the first two commercials created, that’s why we wanted to make sure that fresh pa rin ang material na makikita ng mga tao.”
The initial reaction of RC Cola executives, according to JC and Dionie was, “Ha? What?! Tapos titignan ulit and then matatawa na bBecause they know it shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
“Basta,” after all, is the overarching theme of these commercials, the playground where they let their imaginations go.
“Sa akin, it means kahit ano lang. Basta,” Dionie says.
“It means we can take the campaign anywhere,” says Beverly. “The core message for this ad is very straightforward: the new Qute bottle has 37 ml. more.”
And the script came about “habang nagku-kwentuhan kami and fleshing out ideas,” Greggy says. You’d think they were doing it over beer and whiskey and perhaps weed, but like everyone else Gigil people have been working from home since the pandemic last year.
For this commercial directed by Marius Talampas, only the production team and actors were present during the 12-hour shoot in an actual restaurant in Quezon City, where they had to create the ambience of a fine-dining restaurant where Pacquito would propose and eventually get busted by the women in his life.
All the props and effects are practical, unlike the first two where they used special effects.
JC says they miss face-to-face brainstorming because even when they meet regularly on Zoom the creativity that comes out spontaneously is different when you’re in the same room.
So we asked the creative team what their dream projects are. Their answers range from challenger brands (JC) to fashion (Cath), toys (Beverly), and St. Peters Chapel and Crematorium (Greggy).
Dionie got us thinking (and excited about the idea) when he said he’d love for Gigil to do a tourism campaign for the country.
Well, it is more weird in the Philippines.