It’s the 5th Slurpee BYO Cup Day, so Leo Burnett Melbourne has amped up the idea by creating seemingly impossible cups.

On September 21, 2011, Leo Burnett Australia and 7-Eleven paid homage to the Slurpee with the first Bring Your Own Cup Day. 7-Eleven asked its 150,000 Facebook friends, “If you could fill up any cup with Slurpee what would it be?” The answers led to a number of advertising awards. And international recognition. The first US BYO Cup Day was held in April this year.

To announce BYO Cup Day in Australia this year, Slurpee and Leo Burnett Melbourne set out to create cups out of something never used before – sound.

The agency began by recording three radio ads for this year’s BYO Cup Day, each with a voiceover and distinct soundscape in the background: a Viking opera, a football stadium full of cheering fans, and the mating calls of two ‘frisky’ whales.

Then, using a suite of digital 3D modeling tools, the soundwaves from the radio ads were vectorised to create the shapes of the cups. The voiceover determined the circumference of the cups’ rims, while the peaks and troughs of the sound effects created each cup’s unique height and body shape, before all the soundwaves were meshed together.

“Slurpee BYO Cup Day is now an event where fans are the creators and they prove their ingenuity every year,” Leo Burnett executive creative director, Jason Williams, noted. “Sound Cup is just another way to stimulate their imaginations and inspire cup creativity.”

Fans could download the 3D file and print a Sound Cup themselves, or win one on Slurpee’s Facebook page. Those who did became the first people ever to drink from cups made of sound.

Creative credits:

Agency: Leo Burnett

Executive creative director: Jason Williams

Creatives: Edward Heckes & Daniel Sparkes

Producer: Maria Borowski

Production manager: Kaelene Morton

Group account director: Ari Sztal

Senior account manager: Chloe Erftemeyer

Sound: Colin Simkins @ Gusto Music

Production: The Promotions Factory

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