On Reflection: Sherbet's Bairstow Remembers The Irn-Bru Snowman

The Leith Agency approached us in 2006, after coming up with the idea of a Snowman spoof.

We were known as specialists in hand-drawn 2D animation, following a long series of Persil commercials for JWT in the early noughties and Yorkshire Tea Teascape for Taylors of Harrogate and South Brand Builders in 2003. We hadn’t worked with the agency before, but it was the beginning of a great relationship with producer Les Watt and the team, and we went on to storyboard, design, animate and comp Irn-Bru Animals in 2010.

The script felt simple – as if it had been waiting to be written. Simplicity can go either way with advertising. In this case it was obviously a big plus. We loved the edgy Scottish humour, but doubted permission would be granted to parody the original film, so left it in the hands of the agency.   

Robin Shaw, who’d directed Teascape, was the obvious choice of director – and he was already a big fan of Raymond Briggs’ work. He did all of the animation supported by five assistants. 

The budget and schedule made it impossible to create the ad in the same way as the original. We had to find a quicker way, without compromising its look. The volume and quality of hand-drawn and coloured work was the same, but we tightened up the process. 

All animation was done in blue pencils (made especially for animators but now sadly out of production) and every drawing – 720 in total – was scanned and printed out in a paler blue. The print-outs were worked over with coloured pencils to become the finished frames of full colour artwork. These were scanned and additional compositing and visual effects were done digitally. 

As a small independent production company, we worked a minor miracle to produce an ad of that quality, in that style, within the given schedule and budget. The animation and colouring took nine weeks: an extremely tight turnaround for a hand-drawn, frame-by-frame, minute-long spot.

Robin stepped seamlessly into the shoes of Raymond Briggs, by maintaining the sensitivity of the original film, while also embracing the cheeky humour in the script. One big challenge was to fit the number of scenes described in the script into a 60-second ad, which he did brilliantly. After completing the job, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep on the train back to France and ended up in Belgium. 

We had the usual public indemnity insurance but, because of the profile and value of the Snowman brand, we had to be doubly certain that our agreement with The Leith Agency and AG Barr excluded Sherbet from all copyright issues. I remember battling to get the wording finalised before we delivered the ad.

Ben Robinson, who did the vocals, currently works as a security guard at Asda in Edinburgh. We now wonder whether Ben accosts shoplifters exiting the store with cans of drink by singing “You nicked that Irn-Bruuuu…”

Having worked in the animation industry since the mid-’80s and knowing people who worked on the original film, I was worried some might think we were cheapening The Snowman and being disrespectful. But I thought if we pulled it off, it would ultimately be a real homage. 

Visually, the entire ad is brilliant and features lots of Scottish landmarks. Replacing the whale from the original film with the Loch Ness monster was a great touch. I love the irreverence of it, with a sense of warmth and fun at the same time. The original film and accompanying song had become so well known that creating a parody of them with an edgy Scottish twist was refreshing.    

Now, more than a decade later, the advert is still screened in Scotland every Christmas and has been voted Scotland’s all-time favourite commercial. Some people say Christmas hasn’t arrived until the Irn-Bru Snowman ad has hit the screen.