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Rubicon Release the Sunshine Brings Joy to UK Streets
Release the Sunshine is a 2024 United Kingdom soft drink campaign for Rubicon, created by global full-service agency IMA-HOME for AG Barr, in which a vividly dressed young man named Leo drinks a Rubicon and spontaneously breaks into dance, transforming an overcast street into a joyful celebration that spreads to everyone around him.
The campaign launched on 11 April 2024, with its television debut on 18 April 2024, running through 13 June 2024 across the United Kingdom. It represents the third annual execution of Rubicon's overarching creative platform, Made of Different Stuff, which IMA-HOME first introduced in summer 2022. As reported by Marketing Beat, the campaign was planned and bought by the7stars, with production handled by Chief. The media footprint spans television, BVOD and SVOD placements including Netflix and Disney+, out-of-home and digital out-of-home installations in major UK cities, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, X, Meta, and retail point of sale.
The central objective, as stated by Lucy Henderson, Marketing Director at AG Barr, is to drive salience, encourage curiosity, and connect the brand to growth potential she describes as considerable. The campaign carries a declared annual brand investment of approximately £4 million in the Rubicon brand, according to reporting by SLR Magazine and Scottish Grocer, and was structured to reach fourteen million consumers more than five times each across its channel mix. The Clapboard Score for Release the Sunshine stands at 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its emotional brief with energy and cultural warmth while operating within a familiar campaign architecture.
Rubicon holds a distinct positioning in the United Kingdom soft drinks landscape. AG Barr reported Rubicon at approximately 3.2% of UK soft drinks value share in 2024, up from 2.6% in January of the same year, according to agbarr.co.uk. Edison Research estimated Rubicon revenue growth of approximately 15% during FY2024, as reported by marketscreener.com, while Rubicon represented approximately 19% of AG Barr's total FY2024 revenue according to the same source. These figures place the brand in a position of momentum but also of relative scale: one analyst cited by grocerytrader.co.uk estimated Rubicon's share of the broader UK soft drinks market at approximately 0.8%, underlining the scale of the opportunity the brand is pursuing.
The strategic insight underpinning Release the Sunshine is straightforward and deliberately universal. IMA-HOME identified that the harder life becomes, the more valuable small moments of joy prove to be. In the United Kingdom, where overcast weather and economic pressure form a persistent cultural backdrop, a brand associated with sunshine-rich exotic fruit drinks carries genuine metaphorical leverage. The campaign's emotional architecture — joy as an unstoppable physical force — is designed to cut through category conventions dominated by larger competitors such as Coca-Cola's Fanta and PepsiCo's Tropicana, both of which rely heavily on product-led or refreshment-centric messaging across the UK market.
Alex Uprichard, Managing Director at IMA-HOME, described the work as tapping into Rubicon's product truth — that the drink is Made of Different Stuff — to externalise the sunshine it contains. By grounding an emotional story in a product claim rather than a lifestyle aspiration alone, IMA-HOME and the7stars constructed a campaign designed to generate both broad awareness and meaningful brand association across the diverse UK consumer base Rubicon serves.
Release the Sunshine centres on a single, kinetic narrative conceit. Leo, a young man dressed in vivid colours, proceeds through a grey and ordinary street until a sip of Rubicon unleashes something uncontainable. He dances. He body-pops. He moves around street furniture, past sceptical pedestrians, and through the obstruction of a delivery driver. The sequence escalates until collective joy overtakes the street, at which point the film snaps back to Leo alone — the euphoria real, but internal, sourced from Rubicon itself.
The production was executed by Chief, the credited production partner for the campaign. As reported by marketing-beat.co.uk, the creative director on the campaign is Claire Br — with full production credits not comprehensively documented across publicly available sources at the time of writing. The choreographic and directorial choices prioritise physical comedy and infectious warmth over spectacle, keeping the scale human and the emotional payoff earned rather than imposed.
The visual language deliberately contrasts the drab palette of an overcast UK street with the saturated warmth associated with Rubicon's exotic fruit identity. This contrast does significant strategic work: it makes the brand's promise literal without resorting to CGI excess or abstract metaphor. The deployment across BVOD platforms including Netflix and Disney+ alongside DOOH in major UK cities and social channels including TikTok and Snapchat reflects a media strategy, handled by the7stars, that matches the creative's energy to the environments where it appears. Short-form social edits carry the same choreographic logic, ensuring the campaign's central image — joy as an unstoppable physical force — travels across formats without losing coherence. The Made of Different Stuff platform, now in its third year of execution, provides a stable creative foundation that allows each annual campaign to introduce new story elements while maintaining cumulative brand equity in the United Kingdom.
Release the Sunshine carries measurable structural ambitions. According to reporting by SLR Magazine and Scottish Grocer, the campaign was built to reach fourteen million consumers in the United Kingdom more than five times each, a reach target that reflects the scale of the channel investment spanning television, BVOD, DOOH, and six social platforms simultaneously. No verified post-campaign performance data for Release the Sunshine is publicly available at the time of writing, and the campaign has not been identified as a winner or finalist at Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
The market context, however, frames the campaign's ambitions clearly. AG Barr reported Rubicon's UK soft drinks value share rising from approximately 2.6% to approximately 3.2% across 2024, according to agbarr.co.uk, a period that encompasses the campaign's April-to-June run. Edison Research estimated 15% revenue growth for Rubicon during FY2024, as reported by marketscreener.com. While neither figure can be causally attributed to Release the Sunshine in isolation, the directional trajectory is consistent with the campaign's stated goals of driving salience and curiosity in the United Kingdom.
Structurally, the campaign deploys proven effectiveness levers: a clear emotional insight, a memorable central character, a physical and repeatable brand metaphor, and a platform with three years of cumulative storytelling behind it. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes with genuine warmth and creative confidence, anchored by a culturally resonant insight, while stopping short of the kind of formal innovation or cultural breakthrough that defines the highest-scoring work in the non-alcoholic drinks category.
Release the Sunshine is a 2024 UK soft drink campaign for Rubicon created by IMA-HOME. It follows a young man named Leo whose joy becomes uncontainable after drinking a Rubicon, turning a grey street into a spontaneous dance floor. The campaign launched on 11 April 2024 and ran through 13 June 2024 across television, BVOD, OOH, and social channels.
IMA-HOME created Release the Sunshine for AG Barr's Rubicon brand. IMA-HOME has served as AG Barr's lead creative partner for four years and has developed three consecutive annual executions of the Made of Different Stuff platform. Media planning and buying for the campaign was handled by the7stars, with production by Chief.
The campaign ran across television, BVOD and SVOD platforms including Netflix and Disney+, out-of-home and digital out-of-home in major UK cities, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, X, Meta, and retail point of sale. According to SLR Magazine, it was structured to reach fourteen million consumers in the United Kingdom more than five times each.
Release the Sunshine is the third annual execution of Rubicon's Made of Different Stuff creative platform, which IMA-HOME first introduced in summer 2022 following their appointment as lead creative agency. Each execution builds on a consistent brand truth while introducing new story elements, allowing the platform to accumulate creative equity across the United Kingdom market over multiple years.
The Clapboard Score for Release the Sunshine is 63 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that executes its emotional brief with genuine warmth and cultural relevance in the United Kingdom, built on a strong consumer insight, while not demonstrating the formal creative innovation that characterises the highest-scoring work in the non-alcoholic drinks category.
No verified award wins for Release the Sunshine have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. The 2024 United Kingdom campaign for AG Barr's Rubicon, created by IMA-HOME, earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 based on its creative and strategic execution.
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