Corona Beer's 'The Fish,' created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam in April 2019, is a stop-motion film by PES that transforms marine plastic waste into a
Corona Beer and Wieden + Kennedy Turn Plastic Pollution Into a Parable
Corona Beer's 'The Fish' is a stop-motion animated film published in the Netherlands in April 2019, created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam in partnership with Parley for the Oceans, using discarded marine plastic objects to construct and then destroy a fish, making a visceral argument against single-use plastic pollution.
The campaign launched on April 22, 2019 — Earth Day — a date that announces its intentions without ambiguity. Corona, a brand whose entire identity has been built on beaches, open water, and the promise of escape since its 'Find Your Beach' positioning emerged in the early 2010s, according to Ads of the World, chose to confront what those beaches have become. The film is not a celebration of coastal life; it is a reckoning with it. In the Netherlands, a market defined by its relationship to water, that message carries particular cultural weight.
The campaign extended beyond a single film. Alongside the release, an interactive online portal, ProtectParadise.com, was launched to direct audiences toward Corona and Parley clean-up activities, as reported by The Drum. The dual-channel structure — film for emotional impact, portal for behavioural conversion — gave the campaign both reach and utility. The objective was to raise awareness of marine plastic pollution, discourage single-use plastic consumption, and reinforce Corona's partnership with Parley for the Oceans as a credible long-term environmental commitment rather than a seasonal gesture. Clapboard scores 'The Fish' at 82 out of 100, recognising its creative precision and strategic coherence as one of the stronger purpose-driven executions in the drinks category from that period.
Corona Beer entered the environmental conversation with genuine brand logic behind it. The 'Find Your Beach' platform had spent years associating the brand with coastal idyll, which meant that a campaign about what plastic is doing to those coasts was not a departure — it was an escalation of the same territory into moral seriousness.
The choice to publish in the Netherlands in April 2019 is strategically deliberate. The Netherlands sits at the intersection of Northern European environmental consciousness and a deeply embedded cultural relationship with water and maritime heritage, making it a credible first market for a campaign about ocean health. Dutch consumers have consistently ranked among Europe's more environmentally engaged audiences, and a beer brand activating around ocean plastic in that context faces less credibility scrutiny than it might elsewhere.
The competitive landscape for Corona in 2019 placed it alongside Heineken and AB InBev stablemates in a global beer market that, according to Statista as cited by Clapboard, had reached approximately US$650 billion in revenue with consumption volume of approximately 26.9 billion litres. Heineken, headquartered in Amsterdam and dominant across the Netherlands, had its own sustainability commitments in market, meaning Corona needed a campaign with creative distinctiveness rather than simply a CSR statement. Partnering with Parley for the Oceans — an organisation with established credibility in marine conservation — gave 'The Fish' an institutional backbone that pure brand storytelling could not supply on its own, as noted by Ads of the World. The Parley partnership also anchored ProtectParadise.com as a functional platform rather than a marketing microsite, giving the campaign operational credibility alongside its emotional charge.
Adam Pesapane directs 'The Fish' under his professional name PES, the Academy Award-nominated animator whose stop-motion practice is built on the transformation of everyday objects into unexpected living forms, as reported by The Drum. PES Film served as the production company. The choice of director is not incidental. PES's entire body of work involves finding the animate in the inanimate — making food from household objects, making sport from kitchenware — and 'The Fish' applies that logic to a darker material reality. The plastic objects assembled into the fish are not props chosen for visual convenience; they are the actual vocabulary of marine pollution: straws, combs, toothpicks, the mundane disposable residue of modern consumption, as documented by Ads of the World.
The film's narrative arc is economical and deliberately uncomfortable. A fish assembled from washed-up plastic objects moves through its environment until it is eaten by a seagull. The seagull then struggles. The horror of the sequence is that it is physiologically accurate — seabirds ingesting plastic is among the most documented consequences of marine pollution — and yet it arrives through the formal language of charming stop-motion animation, a genre associated with warmth and craft. That collision of register is where the film's persuasive force lives.
The creative leadership at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam brought specific personnel to bear on the execution. Eric Quennoy and Mark Bernath served as executive creative directors, with Álvaro Sotomayor as creative director, Anyaa Dev and Riccardo Rachello as art directors, Jake Barnes as copywriter, and Joe Togneri as head of broadcast production, as documented by Clapboard. The density of senior creative oversight on a single film reflects the strategic importance Corona and the agency placed on the execution being irreproachable — a campaign about environmental negligence could not afford craft negligence.
No independently verified view counts, earned media reach figures, or conversion data for ProtectParadise.com are publicly available for 'The Fish' at the time of this writing. What is documented, as reported by Campaign Live and The Drum, is the campaign's Earth Day 2019 release window, its trade press reception as a notable creative work in the purpose-driven advertising category, and its archival presence across industry platforms including Ads of the World and Clapboard.
The structural effectiveness of the campaign is assessable on its own terms. A film built from the pollutant it protests is self-evidencing in a way that conventional environmental advertising is not. The audience does not need to be told that plastic is harmful; the fish made of plastic tells them, and the seagull that eats it shows them the consequence. The ProtectParadise.com portal gave that emotional moment a behavioural outlet, which is the conversion infrastructure that most awareness campaigns omit.
Corona's lineage with Parley for the Oceans, which Ads of the World traces across multiple campaign years, suggests the brand treated 'The Fish' as a chapter in an ongoing environmental commitment rather than a single activation. That continuity matters for brand purpose credibility. A beer brand whose long-running 'Beach Clean' work with Parley preceded this film had already earned some right to speak on the subject. The Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100 reflects strong creative and strategic alignment, with the principal constraint being the absence of publicly verified performance data to confirm the campaign's downstream behavioural impact on Dutch consumers or global audiences.
'The Fish' is a stop-motion film created by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam for Corona Beer and Parley for the Oceans. Published in the Netherlands on Earth Day, April 22, 2019, it depicts a fish built from discarded marine plastic that is eaten by a seagull, arguing against single-use plastic consumption.
Academy Award-nominated animator Adam Pesapane, professionally known as PES, directed the film through his production company PES Film. PES is known for stop-motion work that transforms everyday objects into living forms, a practice that made him a precise creative match for a film built from marine plastic debris.
Eric Quennoy and Mark Bernath served as executive creative directors at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. Álvaro Sotomayor was creative director, Anyaa Dev and Riccardo Rachello were art directors, and Joe Togneri led broadcast production. The depth of senior oversight reflects the strategic importance placed on the execution.
ProtectParadise.com launched alongside the film as an interactive portal directing audiences toward Corona and Parley for the Oceans clean-up activities, as reported by The Drum. It gave the emotional impact of the film a behavioural outlet, transforming awareness into action and distinguishing the campaign from pure brand storytelling.
The Netherlands provided a culturally aligned first market given Dutch consumers' strong environmental awareness and the country's deep relationship with water and maritime heritage. Launching on Earth Day 2019 amplified relevance. The market also placed Corona in direct competition with Heineken, demanding creative distinctiveness beyond a standard sustainability message.
'The Fish' receives a Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100. The score reflects strong alignment between creative execution and strategic intent, with the stop-motion format directly embodying the campaign's environmental argument. The absence of publicly verified performance data represents the principal factor constraining a higher rating.
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