DUNLOP
A NEW GENERATION
OF TOUGH
A digital launch film that revisited an iconic piece of DUNLOP heritage — and used AI to make an ambitious production possible on a digital budget.
DUNLOP
A NEW GENERATION
OF TOUGH
A digital launch film that revisited an iconic piece of DUNLOP heritage — and used AI to make an ambitious production possible on a digital budget.
THE BRIEF
Launch the new DUNLOP Grandtrek rugged terrain tyre with a digital-only film that would resonate with long-standing Grandtrek users, while still feeling relevant to a new audience who may never have seen the original advertising. The challenge was to draw on Grandtrek’s heritage without relying on nostalgia alone — and to do it without the budget of a full live action film production.
INSIGHT
Grandtrek already had a memorable piece of brand history to work with: an iconic South African DUNLOP ad featuring a staffy called Rhubarb in a race against other dogs.
For those who remembered it, there was real affection and recognition to tap into. For those who didn’t, the new story still needed to work on its own.
CREATIVE SOLUTION
So rather than remake the old ad, we continued the story.
With a full live-action shoot outside the available budget, we built the film through an AI-led production process, from storyboarding and image generation through to video generation, compositing, editing and sound.
We introduced Dusty, a descendant of Rhubarb, and gave the Grandtrek race a new chapter. Dusty races his owner back to the farmhouse, with
each taking on the same rugged terrain in their own way: water, sand, mud and rock. Dusty has four paws. His owner has four Grandtrek tyres.
They arrive together, before a final moment connects the new story to the old: the owner pauses at a framed photograph of Rhubarb, while Dusty waits outside beside the vehicle.
For audiences who remember Rhubarb, it’s a quiet nod to Grandtrek’s history. For everyone else, it’s simply the end of the story.
THE OUTCOME
A new Grandtrek story rooted in the brand’s past, but designed for its next generation of drivers. The film gave existing users a recognisable link back to Rhubarb while introducing Dusty and the Grandtrek rugged terrain story to audiences with no memory of the original.
It also gave DUNLOP a lead creative asset that could travel beyond the film itself, with the story and visual world repurposed across the path to purchase, including print POS.
And it allowed us to deliver an ambitious digital film without the cost of a traditional production — while learning, occasionally the hard way, exactly where AI helps and where production craft still matters.
BEHIND THE FILM
Making Dusty look like Dusty from one shot to the next turned out to be only one of the challenges.
We’ve unpacked what the production taught us about AI, continuity, performance, prompting and why knowing what good looks like still matters.
