Schweppes Sends an Astronaut to Mars to Sell the Art of Slowing Down
Schweppes launched 'First Step on Mars' in France in March 2025, a cinematic film campaign created by TBWA\Paris that places an astronaut on the surface of Mars and invites her — and viewers — to pause before taking the next step, expressing the brand's 'Take your time' platform through science-fiction storytelling rather than celebrity endorsement.
The campaign introduces Ava, an astronaut portrayed by actor Melissa James, who arrives on Mars and stops at the threshold of history. Before planting that first footstep on an alien world, she opens a Schweppes and savors the moment. The premise distils a simple human truth into an extreme scenario: even at the peak of human achievement, the most meaningful thing a person can do is be fully present. According to tbwa-paris.com, the 'Take your time' brand platform launched formally in March 2025 and is designed to position Schweppes as an invitation to decelerate in an era defined by relentless speed.
In France, the masterbrand film debuted on 24 March 2025, as reported by lareclame.fr. Subsequent executions followed throughout the year: a Schweppes Agrumes film on 21 April 2025, a Tonic film on 15 May 2025, and a Ginger Beer film on 23 June 2025, per lareclame.fr. The campaign was not confined to France alone; according to suntorybeverageandfood-europe.com, the platform rolled out across multiple European markets including Belgium, Czech Republic, and Denmark. The two media assets at the core of the campaign — catalogued by Clapboard — represent a deliberate narrowing of creative focus, prioritising depth of storytelling over volume of executions. Clapboard rates the campaign at 77 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual coherence and production ambition within the non-alcoholic drinks category.
Schweppes anchors its 'Take your time' platform on a specific consumer cohort. According to e-marketing.fr, the campaign strategy targets adults aged 40 to 55, a demographic that has moved beyond the urgency of early career and family formation and is more likely to appreciate — and pay for — a moment of deliberate pleasure. This is not a youth-acquisition play; it is a retention and premiumisation strategy aimed at consumers for whom the idea of slowing down carries genuine emotional weight rather than aspirational abstraction.
The strategic shift is also structural. As reported by tbwa-paris.com and lareclame.fr, the 'First Step on Mars' campaign deliberately moves away from celebrity-led advertising, which had characterised earlier Schweppes communications, and replaces that model with a self-contained fictional universe populated by original characters. This approach protects the brand from the reputational volatility of celebrity partnerships while creating a proprietary narrative world that can be extended across product variants and markets without renegotiating talent agreements.
The competitive context is significant. In the global carbonated soft drinks category, the dominant players are The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, according to Grand View Research, both of which invest heavily in mass-market, high-frequency advertising that prioritises reach over depth. Schweppes, as a brand within Suntory Beverage and Food, occupies a different tier: a premium mixer and standalone soft drink with a heritage identity. By choosing cinematic storytelling and a philosophical brand platform over promotional volume, TBWA\Paris is engineering a distinction that price and distribution alone cannot deliver, positioning Schweppes closer to a cultural object than a commodity beverage across the French market and beyond.
Director Susanna White leads the visual execution of 'First Step on Mars.' According to tbwa-paris.com, the film was produced through Ridley Scott Associates, a production company whose reputation for large-scale, visually ambitious filmmaking is itself a creative signal — aligning Schweppes with a lineage of cinematic advertising that treats the commercial form as a legitimate artistic medium. The choice of Ridley Scott Associates is not incidental; it frames the campaign's ambitions before a single frame is assessed on its own terms.
The creative team at TBWA\Paris brought the concept to life under the direction of Executive Creative Director Benjamin Marchal and Creative Director Faustin Claverie, as documented by lareclame.fr. Copywriter Chloé Rosiaux and Art Director Richard Ghanem are credited as the lead makers on the execution, per lareclame.fr. The visual language Marchal described in e-marketing.fr on 1 April 2025 draws on the metaphor of exploding clocks in a hotel bar setting to express the act of taking time — a surrealist visual device that echoes Dalí without becoming pastiche, grounding the philosophical proposition in tactile, cinematic imagery rather than voiceover instruction.
The soundtrack is among the campaign's most deliberate creative decisions. According to tbwa-paris.com, an a cappella version of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' plays across the film — a song whose entire narrative concerns an astronaut adrift and disconnected, reframed here as a celebration of presence rather than isolation. The tonal inversion is precise: where Bowie's original Major Tom is lost in space, Ava chooses to stop and feel the weight of the moment. The music functions as both cultural reference and emotional counterpoint, giving French and European audiences a familiar emotional anchor inside an entirely unfamiliar world.
No verified performance data for 'First Step on Mars' is publicly available at the time of this analysis. Campaign-level metrics such as reach, view-through rate, brand-lift scores, and sales uplift have not been published by Schweppes, Suntory Beverage and Food, or TBWA\Paris in any source documented by Clapboard. The assessment here is therefore structural rather than quantitative.
The campaign's architecture suggests it was built for durability rather than immediate conversion. The 'Take your time' platform, as described by tbwa-paris.com, is designed as a long-cycle brand-building effort — one that began rolling out product-specific executions across France from March through June 2025 and extended into multiple European markets. This staged release cadence, covering Schweppes Agrumes, Indian Tonic, and Ginger Beer in sequence, demonstrates a platform logic rather than a one-off campaign logic: each film reinforces the same emotional proposition from a different product angle, building cumulative brand equity across the non-alcoholic drinks category.
The decision to commission Ridley Scott Associates and director Susanna White, and to license a David Bowie catalogue track, signals a media investment level consistent with a masterbrand relaunch rather than a seasonal promotion. According to suntorybeverageandfood-europe.com, the campaign ran across France and multiple European markets simultaneously, indicating confidence in the platform's cross-cultural legibility. Clapboard scores 'First Step on Mars' at 77 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that demonstrates genuine conceptual ambition and production excellence, with room to strengthen measurable distinctiveness and long-term brand attribution as the platform matures.
'First Step on Mars' is a 2025 Schweppes film campaign created by TBWA\Paris in France. It depicts an astronaut named Ava pausing on Mars to drink a Schweppes before taking the historic first step, expressing the brand's 'Take your time' platform through cinematic science-fiction storytelling. The masterbrand film launched on 24 March 2025, according to lareclame.fr.
Susanna White directed 'First Step on Mars' for Schweppes. According to tbwa-paris.com, the film was produced by Ridley Scott Associates. The TBWA\Paris creative team included Executive Creative Director Benjamin Marchal, Creative Director Faustin Claverie, Copywriter Chloé Rosiaux, and Art Director Richard Ghanem, as documented by lareclame.fr.
Schweppes' 'Take your time' platform invites consumers to slow down in a fast-paced culture. Launched in March 2025 in France, it targets adults aged 40 to 55, according to e-marketing.fr, and replaces celebrity-led advertising with a self-contained fictional universe, as described by tbwa-paris.com and lareclame.fr.
The campaign uses an a cappella version of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity.' According to tbwa-paris.com, the choice reframes Bowie's story of astronaut isolation as a celebration of presence and stillness, directly supporting Schweppes' 'Take your time' platform and adding cultural resonance for French and European audiences.
The campaign launched in France in March 2025 and extended across multiple European markets. According to suntorybeverageandfood-europe.com, the rollout included Belgium, Czech Republic, and Denmark, among others, demonstrating that Suntory Beverage and Food and TBWA\Paris built the 'Take your time' platform for cross-market scalability from the outset.
Clapboard rates 'First Step on Mars' at 77 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong conceptual coherence, high production ambition via Ridley Scott Associates, and the strategic clarity of the 'Take your time' platform, while acknowledging room to strengthen measurable brand attribution as the Schweppes platform develops across France and Europe.
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