Unhinged is a new protein + caffeine bar built for people who don’t separate their gym life from their grind life. That’s a distinctive positioning right there, in a world abounding with protein and caffeine options.

To make sure that the name and the promise stick in people’s minds as the brand launches officially, the brand launched the most unhinged casting call ever. And filmed it to kick off the campaign. It’s an unconventional way for a challenger brand to introduce itself. Instead of casting a spokesperson, Unhinged is casting its actual customer base and making the willingness to show the whole audition a statement in its own right.

The Unhinged Casting Call invited real people – not models, not athletes, not influencers – to submit the ways the ways life asks them to keep going: a backflip, a job they quit on a whim, a HYROX finished before 5pm on a workday. All for the opportunity to be the face of the Unhinged brand. The launch campaign supports the brand’s broader positioning around fuelling people going after big things – in whatever form that takes.

The twist? Everyone who was unhinged enough to audition, got cast. The campaign, shot in a deliberately raw, anti-advertising studio style, resulted in a rolling series called Portraits of the Unhinged, including individual films and stills of real, and really Unhinged, brand ambassadors. Content will continue to drop throughout the year, culminating in a launch film that brings the entire roster together for the first time.

Running through it all is a visual device pulled from the product’s packaging – the slash. It’s a nod to the brand’s ethos of keep going, doing it all, being it all. In the campaign, the slash strings together the full range of who someone is – a Libra / an aspiring Scientologist / works in finance / a skateboarder. And it shows up in the submissions themselves – a backflip / a job quit on a whim / a HYROX finished before 5pm on a workday. One small mark, holding together everyone’s whole, unhinged self.

The campaign is also the creative debut of Jeph Burton and Hunter Hampton in their new chapter as co-founders of The Circle, the agency the former Johannes Leonardo executive creative directors launched after a decade behind some of adidas’ most awarded work, including standout collaborations with Oasis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jude Bellingham. The Circle is built around what Burton and Hampton call “cultural gravity,” or the idea that advertising should draw audiences in rather than interrupt them. With Unhinged, as with the rest of their early work at The Circle, the goal isn’t reach for its own sake, it’s building something with a voice and a momentum that belongs entirely to itself.