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How CAPI Made 'Hard to Make. Easy to Drink.' Land in Australia
CAPI's 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' campaign is a 2013 Australian advertising initiative comprising four short films that introduced the brand platform 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' by dramatising the extreme global sourcing behind CAPI's 100% natural sparkling soft drinks, running across television, cinema, and digital channels.
Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney created the campaign, which launched in March 2013 after the agency was appointed to the CAPI account in November 2012. The four individual films — titled 'Natural', 'Bite', 'Congo', and 'Cuba' — each carry a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100, reflecting solid creative execution within the competitive Australian non-alcoholic drinks category. The campaign marks CAPI's first significant above-the-line advertising push, setting a tone of adventurous authenticity for a brand built on premium, naturally sourced ingredients.
In Australia, the campaign arrived at a moment when consumer appetite for natural and premium soft drinks was sharpening. CAPI positioned itself not merely as an alternative to mainstream carbonated drinks but as a product whose quality demands genuine sacrifice — from Borneo to the Andes, no origin is treated as too remote or inhospitable. That founding logic gave Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney the creative mandate to build an entire brand character around the difficulty of making something truly natural, and to make that difficulty feel exciting rather than burdensome.
CAPI occupies a premium, natural sparkling soft drink niche in Australia with no publicly disclosed market share or volume data. The strategic insight behind 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' is rooted in a simple tension: the more effort a brand visibly invests in sourcing, the more effortless the experience of drinking should feel for the consumer. That inversion gave the campaign both its name and its narrative engine.
The broader context matters. According to foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au, the non-alcoholic drinks sector in Australia was operating inside a global soft drinks market estimated at approximately US$937 billion in 2013. Rabobank expected approximately 2% global carbonated soft drink segment growth in 2013, with Brazil and Mexico identified as major contributors, underscoring that growth in the category was neither guaranteed nor evenly distributed. For a small Australian brand like CAPI, competing on volume or price against established players was not viable. Competing on provenance and craft was.
Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney's appointment, confirmed in November 2012 as reported by bandt.com.au, gave the agency enough lead time to develop a campaign that could carry genuine brand-building weight rather than simply drive short-term trial. The 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' platform was built to last — a positioning line that works as both a product truth and a creative instruction. In the Australian natural drinks space, where the competitive landscape was increasingly crowded with brands claiming wellness credentials, CAPI's decision to dramatise process over product set it apart from generic health messaging.
Director Steve Ayson brought the 'CAPI man' to life across all four films in the campaign. Working through production company The Sweet Shop, Ayson developed a character who interrupts the routines of ordinary Australian urban consumers to explain, with evident eccentricity, the hazardous and far-flung origins of CAPI's natural ingredients. The films are titled 'Natural', 'Bite', 'Congo', and 'Cuba', and each routes its story through a different ingredient source or flavour truth.
On screen, the CAPI man appears as a jungle-worn figure who arrives uninvited into everyday settings — his presence jarring against the mundane backdrop of city life. He delivers his ingredient credentials with the earnest intensity of someone who has genuinely survived hostile terrain to bring a soft drink to market. The contrast between his wild, expedition-worn demeanour and the ease with which the consumer receives the finished drink is precisely the visual argument the campaign makes for 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.'
Damon Stapleton served as creative director on the campaign at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, and media placement was handled by Two Hands, as documented by saatchi.com. CAPI founder and owner Pitzy Folk was quoted as saying the creative 'took risks' and that he was 'blown away' by the result, per saatchi.com. The campaign was distributed across television, cinema, and digital channels in Australia — a media mix that allowed the character-driven narrative to build familiarity across multiple touchpoints while maintaining the films' comedic and adventurous tone.
No independently verified post-campaign performance data for 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' — such as sales uplift, brand tracking shifts, or media reach figures — is publicly available. What the campaign does offer is a structurally coherent case for how a small Australian brand can punch above its weight through creative distinctiveness rather than media spend.
The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative platform with consistency and confidence. The four-film structure gives the brand platform room to breathe — each film reinforces 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' from a different ingredient angle, so the cumulative effect across television, cinema, and digital channels in Australia is stronger than any single execution alone. The character-led approach creates memorability in a category — non-alcoholic sparkling drinks — where most advertising defaults to refreshment imagery and lifestyle aspiration.
CAPI founder Pitzy Folk's public endorsement of the creative risk-taking, as reported by saatchi.com, suggests the brand was satisfied with the direction. That internal alignment between client and agency is itself a structural indicator of campaign health. For a brand making its first significant above-the-line investment in the Australian market, the 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' campaign established a durable brand voice that subsequent creative could build upon.
CAPI's 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' campaign is a four-film Australian advertising series launched in March 2013. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, it introduced the brand platform 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' by dramatising the extreme global sourcing behind CAPI's 100% natural sparkling soft drinks through an eccentric jungle character.
Steve Ayson directed all four films in the CAPI campaign. He worked through production company The Sweet Shop, with Damon Stapleton serving as creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney. The campaign ran across television, cinema, and digital channels in Australia, launching in late March 2013.
Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney was appointed as CAPI's creative agency on 28 November 2012, as reported by bandt.com.au. The agency launched its first campaign for the brand — 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' — in March 2013, introducing the 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' platform to Australian audiences.
The CAPI man is an eccentric, jungle-worn character who interrupts the routines of ordinary Australian urban consumers to explain the hazardous origins of CAPI's natural ingredients. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, the character embodies the brand platform 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' across all four campaign films.
CAPI distributed the campaign across television, cinema, and digital channels in Australia. Media planning was handled by Two Hands. The multi-channel approach allowed the character-driven narrative to build recognition across different touchpoints, reinforcing the 'Hard to make. Easy to drink.' platform through repeated exposure in the Australian market.
CAPI's 'Cuba, Congo, Bite, Natural' campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects consistent execution of a distinctive creative platform across four films, with the character-led narrative and multi-channel Australian distribution contributing to its effectiveness as a brand-building campaign in the natural drinks category.
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