{"id":20363,"date":"2018-06-26T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/?p=20363"},"modified":"2026-09-24T19:33:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T23:33:53","slug":"how-seth-werner-turned-a-cluster-of-grapes-into-the-california-raisins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/news\/how-seth-werner-turned-a-cluster-of-grapes-into-the-california-raisins\/20363\/","title":{"rendered":"How Seth Werner Turned a Cluster of Grapes Into the California Raisins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Heather Taylor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seth Werner still remembers the night he came up with the idea for the California Raisins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year was 1986. Back then, Werner was 31-years-old and had been living and working in San Francisco, California for a year at the ad agency Foote Cone Belding. Mike Koelker, famous for creating the Levi\u2019s \u201c501 Blues\u201d campaign, hired Werner on as a copywriter at FCB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The dream gig started to sour a bit. Werner quickly found himself growing bored with his workload, which was nowhere near as exciting as Koelker\u2019s work with the Levi\u2019s account. He found himself thinking back on his previous role at Marschalk in New York (an Interpublic agency that was later known as Lowe and Partners and merged with Mullen to create MullenLowe Group). Werner had worked on brands like Stroh\u2019s Beer, Citicorp, and Coca-Cola and knew he was capable of doing more. He went to Koelker to see what could be done and was assigned to work on the account for CalRAB \u2014 the California Raisin Advisory Board, better known as the California Raisins<\/a> today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CalRAB, according to Koelker, was FCB\u2019s smallest account. It was in need of creative, good work to revitalize sales for a natural fruit that was \u2014 appropriately enough \u2014 all dried up with consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After receiving the assignment from Koelker, Werner spent the night at a friend\u2019s apartment. His friends, Bill and George, asked him what he was working on and Werner replied he was on the California Raisins account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat can you possibly do with that?\u201d his friends asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will probably do something stupid, like having a bunch of raisins dancing to the song \u2018I Heard It Through the Grapevine<\/em>.\u2019\u201d Werner replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was Werner\u2019s light bulb moment. \u201cI remember thinking, hey wait a second, maybe that isn\u2019t so stupid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Werner got to work on the idea the next day, sitting with FCB art director Dexter Fedor to strategize on how to execute it. As characters, the Raisins (capital R) were meant to come in a cluster because Werner pointed out that, \u201cpeople don\u2019t eat raisins one at a time.\u201d These Raisins would form both a conga line and<\/em> their own singing group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Raisins didn\u2019t initially have names or a lead singer, they did have their signature tune \u201cI Heard It Through the Grapevine<\/em>\u201d to serenade audiences. Out of all the musical genres to choose from, Werner picked the classic inspired by his childhood love for Motown music. He also felt it was a fit for the assignment, since raisins were once grapes, and that the song brought a sense of \u201ccool\u201d to the campaign. Which, for Werner, was kind of the point. \u201cWe were just going for cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the animation, Werner wasn\u2019t interested in drawings of characters. He wanted to do something that felt real and felt that clay animation was the best way to go. When his initial contact on the project didn\u2019t work out, Werner turned to stop-motion director Will Vinton<\/a>, founder of Will Vinton Studios, with his scripts. Then and now, Vinton was a pioneer in the clay animation space and even coined (and trademarked) the word \u201cClaymation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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