Nestlé

#FarakPadtaHai

Most children’s nutrition advertising runs on guilt. Show a mother something she might be getting wrong, let it sit, sell her the fix. It works, which is why the whole category has been doing it for decades, and it also means every film in this space treats the woman watching as a problem to be corrected. The other difficulty is a writing one. Nutrition pays off over years, so the promise lives somewhere in a future nobody can shoot, while the mother’s actual life is one small negotiation at a breakfast table before school. Go big on the future and the film turns into a greeting card. Stay in the kitchen and it turns into porridge.

We started from the mother knowing what she is doing. She is not one missed meal away from failing anyone, she has a routine that works and a kid who has opinions, and the brand’s job is to be useful inside that rather than to turn up with a warning. Deciding that early is what made the film warm, because warmth is not something you can add afterwards with a soft lens and a piano. It is in whether the child gets to be a person, whether the house looks like people live in it, whether anybody is allowed to look tired at 7am. I took it from concept through scripting, storyboarding and tone setting, and stayed in on the direction, mostly because heartfelt is about one performance choice away from sentimental and somebody has to be in the room protecting the difference.