The trippy Fruitopia commercials scored by Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins
If I say the word “Fruitopia” to you, there’s a decent chance you’ll respond with some comment about the 1990s, the savviest among you might even say “1994” specifically.
Fruitopia was the brainchild of Sergio Zyman, a Coca-Cola marketing head who also brought the world the overt GenX pandering elixir OK Cola around the same time. The fruit-flavoured tea concoction was a clear attempt to move in on the territory staked out by Snapple. While Fruitopia had its day in the sun, as is often the case, the first product to define a niche gets to own that niche.
Fruitopia is remembered today for its neo-hippie trappings. The flavours had names like The Grape Beyond, Tangerine Wavelength, Citrus Consciousness, and Raspberry Psychic Lemonade, and the marketing consisted mainly of trippy and “deep” kaleidoscope commercials featuring cosmic music scored and performed by Kate Bush, the Cocteau Twins, and the Muffs, among others.
Marty Cooke and Andrew Chinich of Chiat/Day oversaw the campaign; they reached out to Bush and were delighted when she agreed to do nine spots for the drink. According to Cooke, Bush indicated that “she was interested in providing a lot of variety, from Japanese drummers to Moroccan music … and she came through in spades”.
In Graeme Thomson’s book Kate Bush: Under the Ivy, we get this: “[Bush] accepted a commission to write several brief pieces of music to accompany the $30m US TV ad campaign for the launch of Coca-Cola’s new fruit drink Fruitopia…. It seemed an incongruous move. Bush had consistently turned down advances of this nature”.
Thomson added: “The motivation for her changing tack wasn’t clear but was probably varied: far from the commercial ingenue she sometimes appears, certainly the financial rewards would have been extremely significant; perhaps she liked the tone of the ads, which were relatively innovative and visually stimulating and over which she was given complete artistic control. She may also have recognised an opportunity to cast the net of her music a little wider, while also finding a home for all the melodic waifs and rhythmic strays that had never quite found a home in her ‘proper’ songs. … [each melody hinted] at a longer piece, several reminiscent of the kind of odd, rhythmic, electronic pop she was making around the time of The Dreaming“.
Rewatching the Fruitopia ads now, it’s hard not to smirk at how earnestly trippy they are. Think teenage poetry meets an acid comedown, all swirling colours, slow-motion fruit, and vague cosmic guff. But Bush’s music gives them real bite—just enough weirdness to stop it all feeling like a total piss-take. It’s classic ‘90s advertising hubris: slap some Cocteau Twins on a juice ad and call it deep. Still, there’s something charming about how over the top it all is. For a soft drink campaign, it went surprisingly hard on the vibes.
You can find a selection of the ads below.