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Schweppes Martian Encounter Brings a Slow Moment to Deep Space
Schweppes 'Martian Encounter' is a 2025 narrative film campaign created by TBWA\Paris that follows fictional astronaut Ava as she lands on Mars, pauses to enjoy Schweppes, and eventually introduces the drink to Martian civilisation, extending the brand's 'Take Your Time' platform across France and multinational worldwide markets.
Published in May 2025, the campaign arrives as the second chapter of a Mars-set story that Schweppes and TBWA\Paris launched in March 2025 as part of a deliberate creative platform built around deceleration. That original chapter depicted Ava's landing and her solitary moment of stillness on another planet. The May continuation deepens the mythology, bringing Martians into contact with the brand and expanding the 'Take Your Time' message into something closer to interplanetary diplomacy. Two film assets comprise the campaign, covering both Schweppes Agrumes and Schweppes Ginger Beer, according to Clapboard.
The geographic ambition of 'Martian Encounter' is significant. While France serves as the primary launch market, the campaign is designed for multinational worldwide distribution, signalling that Schweppes and its parent company Suntory Beverage and Food view this creative platform as an asset capable of travelling across cultures without localisation. In the non-alcoholic drinks category, that kind of universally legible storytelling is rare. The campaign's science-fiction register sidesteps language, cultural context, and seasonal relevance, making it structurally portable in a way that few Food and Drink campaigns achieve. The Schweppes Agrumes film launched on April 21, 2025, across television and video-on-demand channels, as reported by La Réclame, before the full campaign package was published in May 2025.
Schweppes operates in a market defined by sensory differentiation rather than functional claims. The global carbonated soft drinks market is estimated at US$285.4 billion in 2025, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 3.5 percent through 2033, according to Grand View Research. Schweppes competes primarily in the tonic water, mixers, ginger beer, and flavoured sparkling drinks segments rather than the mainstream cola category dominated by rivals such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, meaning that brand character and occasion-based identity carry more commercial weight than price or distribution alone.
In France and across multinational markets, the mixer and premium sparkling drinks segment has become increasingly contested. Fever-Tree, in particular, has positioned itself aggressively on provenance and quality cues, challenging Schweppes's long-held category leadership in the mixer space. Against this competitive backdrop, the 'Take Your Time' platform that TBWA\Paris developed in March 2025 represents a strategic pivot toward emotional and experiential territory, as noted by CBNews. Rather than competing on ingredient transparency or craft credentials, Schweppes claims a behavioural disposition: the act of pausing, savouring, and being present. 'Martian Encounter' translates that disposition into a narrative world so extreme — a lone astronaut on Mars — that the product's ability to create a moment of stillness becomes genuinely credible rather than aspirational shorthand.
The March 2025 campaign was explicitly framed as a departure from conventional advertising codes in the non-alcoholic drinks category, according to TBWA\Paris's own published documentation on tbwa-paris.com. By May 2025, 'Martian Encounter' had extended that departure into full serialised storytelling, a structural choice that builds brand equity across multiple releases rather than spending it in a single film.
Director Susanna White leads the production of 'Martian Encounter', bringing a long-form television and film sensibility to a campaign that could easily have settled for visual spectacle alone. White's involvement, produced through Ridley Scott Associates, signals a production commitment more commonly associated with theatrical releases than Food and Drink advertising. The choice of production company is itself a creative statement: Ridley Scott Associates carries an immediate association with science-fiction world-building that primes audience expectations before a single frame is seen, as noted by Influencia.
Director of photography John Mathieson, whose credits include Gladiator I and II according to La Réclame, shoots the Martian landscape with a texture and weight that avoids the overly clean aesthetic typical of non-alcoholic drinks advertising. Production designer Will Htay, associated with Star Wars productions, constructs the physical environment of Mars with a specificity that grounds the campaign's more fantastical elements in tactile reality, per Clapboard. Costume designer Janty Yates, an Oscar winner, handles the visual vocabulary of both Ava and the Martian civilisation she encounters, as documented by TBWA\Paris on tbwa-paris.com.
Within TBWA\Paris, Executive Creative Directors Benjamin Marchal and Faustin Claverie lead the creative direction of the campaign. Copywriter Chloé Rosiaux and Art Director Richard Ghanem shape the narrative and visual language at the executional level, with Managing Director Jonathan Serog overseeing agency operations across the project, according to Influencia. Global Schweppes Marketing Manager Nicolas Poillot represents the client partnership. The ensemble of talent — spanning advertising, cinema, and production design — is unusual in scale for a drinks campaign and reflects the platform-level ambition that Schweppes and TBWA\Paris have attached to the 'Take Your Time' world.
No verified performance data for 'Martian Encounter' is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign was published in May 2025, and no independently audited figures covering reach, brand uplift, sales impact, or media performance have been released by Schweppes, Suntory Beverage and Food, or TBWA\Paris across France or multinational worldwide markets.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness case rests on several observable qualities. The serialised format — with the March 2025 launch followed by the May 2025 'Martian Encounter' chapter — creates compounding brand exposure without requiring audiences to re-establish context, a mechanical advantage that single-execution campaigns do not possess. The deployment across television and video-on-demand in France, as reported by La Réclame, positions the films in environments where sustained attention is higher than in social-first formats. The calibre of the production team, including Susanna White, John Mathieson, and Janty Yates, generates earned media and industry credibility that extends the effective reach of a paid media buy.
The Clapboard Score for 'Martian Encounter' stands at 63 out of 100. That score reflects a campaign with genuine creative ambition and a coherent strategic platform, while indicating room for stronger integration between the brand's product role and its narrative function. The product appears as a catalyst for a moment rather than as a character within it, which limits the depth of brand attribution that the exceptional production values might otherwise secure. In a category where Fever-Tree and other premium challengers compete hard on product-led storytelling, that distinction carries strategic weight.
Schweppes 'Martian Encounter' is a 2025 narrative film campaign by TBWA\Paris in which astronaut Ava lands on Mars and introduces Schweppes to Martian civilisation. It extends the 'Take Your Time' platform launched in March 2025, covering Schweppes Agrumes and Schweppes Ginger Beer across France and multinational worldwide markets.
Susanna White directed 'Martian Encounter' for Schweppes. White worked through production company Ridley Scott Associates, with director of photography John Mathieson, production designer Will Htay, and Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates rounding out the core production team, as documented by TBWA\Paris and reported by La Réclame.
Schweppes Agrumes and Schweppes Ginger Beer are the two products featured in 'Martian Encounter.' According to Clapboard, the campaign contains two film assets. The Schweppes Agrumes film launched on April 21, 2025, across television and video-on-demand in France, as reported by La Réclame.
Schweppes 'Take Your Time' is a brand platform launched in March 2025 by TBWA\Paris encouraging consumers to slow down and savour the present moment. According to CBNews, it was positioned as a deliberate departure from conventional non-alcoholic drinks advertising, using narrative and sensory experience rather than celebrity endorsement.
Schweppes 'Martian Encounter' receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects genuine creative ambition and a coherent strategic platform while noting that the product functions more as a catalyst for a moment than as a fully integrated narrative character, limiting the depth of brand attribution the production values might otherwise achieve.
Benjamin Marchal and Faustin Claverie served as Executive Creative Directors on 'Martian Encounter' at TBWA\Paris. Copywriter Chloé Rosiaux and Art Director Richard Ghanem led executional creative work, with Managing Director Jonathan Serog overseeing the agency, according to Influencia and documentation published by TBWA\Paris.
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