To kickstart the creative process, Directors Jero Villar Uribe and Gabriel Munitz-Alessio dug deep into the work of Jacobo and Maria, who were instrumental in designing the Alebrije featured in Pixar’s Coco and inspired many of the movie’s characters. There is a spiritual element to the characters they create that is foundational to the creation process itself.
We soon learned about the central theme of dreams as a medium of communication with Alebrijes. We discovered and were influenced by the work of Pedro Linares, the famous creator of the Alebrije, who feverishly crafted the creatures out of papier mache after seeing visions in a dream.
In the spirit of Ray Bradbury’s famous word association exercise, Jero and Gabe batted the word “dreams” back and forth on the phone between Mexico and New York. This was pre-pandemic, before Zoom took over as the primary mode of communication.
Dreams … dreams … a dream to drive … Mercedes-Benz, drives like a dream.
Wait a minute. Where have we heard that before?
We must be on to something! So, we settled on the theme of “dreams” and set about deciding what kind of story to tell.
One of the first questions to answer had to do with perspective. Who’s the star of the show? With whom do we want the audience to connect?
These questions are often obvious when the characters in a story are human, or at least alive. In a car commercial, this becomes a bit less clear. Do you place a human in the car (or, in one notable case, dancing hamsters) to create an empathic bridge from human viewer to the product? Or is the car itself the main character?
In pondering this big question, we were reminded of this all-time-great Spike Jonze Ikea spot.
So, that settled it. We would embrace anthropomorphization. The car would be the hero of our story.
We began to map out the hero’s journey. What does a car dream about? We thought about what the car itself represented: a fusion of luxury and performance, a plush, bed-like interior and enough power and durability to navigate the most rugged terrain. We thought about the dual nature of dreams. In dreams, we can have great adventures from the comfort of our beds. Dreams are ephemeral and eternal, real and unreal.
We had our story. We would follow the car on its dream journey, as it lived out its innermost desires, tearing through the Oaxacan desert’s dusty trails in luxury and style.