Has the Cucumber Eye Crew really hit Cannes? That’s one takeaway you might have gleaned from watching a frantic TV ad for Youth Dose Eye Treatment, the new anti-ageing cream from the beauty and personal care brand Kiehl’s, created by AKQA and produced by Aggressive, the production and design studio.

Titled 'Youth Dose', the spot borrows liberally from a wide range of visual stimuli familiar to anyone spending time on Snapchat or grazing the world of YouTube, cable news and beauty pubs, where competing claims, tips and secrets abound. The spot features everything from parodies of slick cosmetic ads to not-quite-buffered YouTube tutorials and testimonials from video influencers, tying them together into a fast paced, multi-media barrage of beauty-fad sensory overload. 

"We cracked open a Pandora’s box of references on this project,” explains Aggressive creative director Alex Topaller. “Crafting a glitching, Internet-pop cacophony of the stranger-than-fiction world of beauty regimens, for which Kiehl’s Youth Dose offers an effortless solution.”

Working with the New York and Portland offices of AKQA, 'Youth Dose' allowed Aggressive to utilise all of its key strengths as a studio, combining beautifully shot and stylised live-action content with outrageous design and transition-driven visual story-telling.

“What’s key is that all of the scenes and references were precisely conceived and cu-rated to feel authentic and relatable,” adds Aggressive creative director Dan Shapiro. “With organic live action scenes as our bookends, we used a combination of studio-shot, lighting-driven pickup elements, sprinkled liberally with stock footage, motion design and CG animation.” 

Adds Topaller, “We felt there was a chance to create something really clever, cheeky and ownable here, resulting in a design-driven film that’s accessible and enjoyable to watch in its own right, while tastefully positioning Kiehl’s Youth Dose as the  natural choice for any woman’s cosmetic toolkit.”