ARCHIVEBarry's Tea Writes a Love Letter to Irish Identity
How Barry's Tea Redefined Irish Belonging With a Love Letter Campaign Barry's Tea's "Love Letter to...
How Sprite Turned a Real Argentine Hater Into a Brand Film
Sprite's 'Facing a Hater' is a approximately three-minute social-experiment film produced in Argentina in April 2019 by Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina, in which a real Twitter user who had attacked hundreds of people online was brought face-to-face with his victims on camera, translating the brand's global 'haters' platform into a data-driven narrative specific to the Argentine market.
The campaign extends Sprite's global 'Cut Through the Noise' platform, which launched in 2015, according to Ads of the World. Rather than casting actors or scripting confrontations, the agencies located an actual prolific hater through two months of artificial-intelligence-assisted Twitter analysis, as documented by Ads of the World. The identified user had attacked five hundred and sixty-five people through more than one thousand tweets, per reporting on Ads of the World, making him a statistically verifiable subject rather than a symbolic one. Approximately one hundred people had criticised this individual in return, according to Adlatina, creating a ready-made social ecosystem from which the film's human drama could be drawn.
In Argentina, where social media culture and digital engagement have grown sharply across younger demographics, Sprite positioned itself not as a passive observer of online toxicity but as an active agent of confrontation and, ultimately, resolution. The campaign carried the hashtag #ILOVEYOUHATER and sat within Sprite's broader seasonal messaging around 'Es temporada de haters,' or 'It's hater season,' as noted by Ads of the World. The film was distributed via YouTube and social platforms, extending its reach beyond a single broadcast moment and inviting ongoing participation from Argentine audiences. Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina also worked alongside media agency Starcom on the campaign's data and distribution architecture, per Ads of the World. Clapboard scores this campaign 69 out of 100, reflecting a concept with genuine strategic originality that stops short of the executional completeness that separates good work from enduring work.
Sprite identified a precise consumer tension as the strategic foundation for 'Facing a Hater.' Online hostility directed at brands and individuals had become a measurable phenomenon in Argentina by 2019, and Sprite's agencies chose to treat that hostility not as a communications obstacle but as raw creative material. The two-month Twitter analysis, conducted using artificial-intelligence and data-mining tools by Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina, as documented by Ads of the World, gave the campaign an empirical credibility that separates it from campaigns that merely reference internet culture without engaging it directly.
The Coca-Cola Company, Sprite's parent, reported 2019 net revenue of thirty-seven point two billion US dollars, up from thirty-four point three billion in 2018, according to the company's own reported financials as cited by Research and Markets. That commercial strength afforded Sprite the latitude to pursue a locally specific, unconventional format in Argentina rather than defaulting to a globally uniform television execution. In the non-alcoholic drinks category, Sprite competes directly with PepsiCo's 7UP in the lemon-lime segment across the Argentine market, as well as with a broader set of carbonated soft-drink alternatives. The Coca-Cola Company held a leading position in the global carbonated soft-drinks market as of 2017, according to OMR Global, giving Sprite the category authority to make culturally assertive moves rather than defensive ones.
The strategic insight is precise. Young Argentine consumers who are native to social media do not experience online negativity as background noise; they experience it as a lived social dynamic with real emotional stakes. By surfacing that dynamic and placing Sprite at the centre of its resolution, the brand claimed a culturally resonant position without resorting to product-feature claims. The data-led approach also gave Santo and Digitas a journalistic defensibility, ensuring that the film's emotional confrontations could not be dismissed as staged or fabricated, which is a meaningful advantage in an era of widespread scepticism toward branded content.
Mariano Lemon directed 'Facing a Hater' for production company La Doble, as credited by Ads of the World. The film's creative direction rested on a deceptively simple formal choice: remove the artifice of advertising production and allow the social experiment to generate its own visual and emotional logic. That choice placed enormous pressure on casting, pacing, and the courage of the subjects involved, all of which the film had to earn through documentary rigour rather than scripted control.
Maxi Itzkoff, Chief Creative Officer and Partner at Santo Buenos Aires, served as both the campaign's creative director and its copywriter, per Ads of the World and as documented by Clapboard. Rafael Santamarina and Juan Ignacio Etchanique served as Executive Creative Directors, with Etchanique also credited as Art Director, according to Ads of the World. Creative direction was shared between Juan Manuel Quintero Betancur and Javier García, per Clapboard. Juan Cáceres, Emily De Gennaro, and Pedro Zenone are among the additional credited contributors documented in campaign records on Ads of the World. Account direction was handled by Florencia Spinetta and Sabrina Santos, with agency production led by Leandro Sussman and Ella Sercovich, as noted by Clapboard.
The approximately three-minute runtime is a deliberate structural decision. It is long enough to establish the hater as a recognisable human type, develop the confrontations with genuine emotional stakes, and arrive at a resolution that feels earned rather than engineered. Distributed primarily through YouTube and social platforms in the Argentine market, the film was built for the viewing behaviour of its target audience, that is, willing, attentive consumption rather than passive broadcast exposure. The #ILOVEYOUHATER hashtag functioned as an extension mechanism, inviting Argentine viewers to continue the conversation beyond the film itself and giving Sprite a participatory layer that pure broadcast formats cannot replicate.
No verified performance data for 'Facing a Hater' is publicly available. There are no independently confirmed figures for view counts, engagement rates, earned media value, or sales impact attributable to the campaign in the Argentine market. What can be assessed, however, is the structural effectiveness of the creative and strategic choices made by Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina.
The campaign's core strength is its evidentiary foundation. By spending two months analysing Twitter conversations through artificial-intelligence and data-mining tools, as reported by Ads of the World, the agencies created a campaign that is, in principle, verifiable. The hater existed. The five hundred and sixty-five attacks existed. The victims existed. That factual architecture insulates the film from the credibility problem that undermines much branded documentary content. In Argentina, where audiences are alert to corporate sincerity deficits, this matters more than it might in markets with lower brand scepticism.
The campaign's structural weakness is its reliance on a single film asset distributed through owned and social channels in a market where paid amplification, press coverage, and influencer endorsement typically determine whether a social experiment achieves cultural penetration or remains a niche creative achievement. Without evidence of a sustained media plan or measurable public conversation in Argentina, it is difficult to assess whether 'Facing a Hater' moved beyond the advertising industry's own appreciation circuit into genuine popular awareness. The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects precisely this gap: a concept that is genuinely innovative in its use of data and narrative, constrained by questions about the scale and durability of its real-world impact.
'Facing a Hater' is a social-experiment film created for Sprite in Argentina in April 2019 by Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina. The campaign used AI-driven Twitter analysis to find a real prolific online hater and brought him face-to-face with his victims on camera, extending Sprite's global haters platform into the Argentine market.
Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina created 'Facing a Hater' for Sprite in 2019. Media agency Starcom also contributed to the campaign's data and distribution architecture, according to Ads of the World. Maxi Itzkoff of Santo served as Chief Creative Officer and copywriter, with Mariano Lemon directing the film for production company La Doble.
Santo Buenos Aires and Digitas Argentina conducted two months of Twitter-conversation analysis using artificial-intelligence and data-mining tools, as reported by Ads of the World. The process identified a user who had attacked five hundred and sixty-five people through more than one thousand tweets, giving the campaign a factually verifiable subject rather than a scripted character.
Clapboard scores 'Facing a Hater' at 69 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's genuine strategic and conceptual originality, particularly its data-driven approach to locating a real subject in the Argentine market, while noting questions about the scale and measurable real-world impact of the campaign's distribution and audience reach.
Sprite launched its global 'Cut Through the Noise' platform in 2015, according to Ads of the World. 'Facing a Hater' extends that platform's haters messaging into Argentina with a locally specific, data-led execution. The campaign hashtag #ILOVEYOUHATER and the seasonal framing 'Es temporada de haters' anchor the global idea to Argentine social media culture.
'Facing a Hater' was distributed via YouTube and social platforms in Argentina, as documented by Ads of the World. The approximately three-minute film was built for attentive online viewing rather than passive broadcast exposure, with the #ILOVEYOUHATER hashtag functioning as a participation layer extending the campaign conversation beyond the film itself.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
