Only Ben Stiller could show up to a soda commercial dressed like he’s about to perform Cats on Broadway. That is essentially the premise behind the latest campaign for Stiller’s Soda, directed by Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico, through production company m ss ng p eces.
The campaign centers on a collaboration between Stiller’s Soda and Katz’s Delicatessen, where the legendary Lower East Side deli is adding a new soda to its menu for the first time in decades: Stiller’s Shirley Temple.
To announce the partnership, Heller puts himself in front of the camera opposite Ben Stiller in a spot that leans hard into New York absurdity.
Stiller arrives for what he apparently believes is an interview connected to Cats — not a soda campaign — and he is already fully committed to the bit.
Not metaphorically committed.
Actually dressed as Munkustrap.
The costume came together with help from Sarah Edwards, the costume designer whose credits include Apple TV+’s Severance. According to the campaign team, Edwards tapped contacts who had worked on the original Broadway production to help locate pieces for the look, including one of the original wigs.
So Stiller arrives at Katz’s in full feline mode and then has to somehow continue with an interview about soda. That collision of celebrity, New York institutions and deadpan chaos is very much in Heller’s wheelhouse. Watch below:
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Better known to his social following as New York Nico, Heller has built his career documenting the city’s personalities, neighborhoods and cultural oddities. His commercial work increasingly takes that same approach, using recognizable New York characters and locations without sanding off what makes them strange in the first place. m ss ng p eces describes Heller as a documentarian and commercial director whose work focuses on authentic stories about the people and places of his hometown.
The new Stiller’s work also marks Heller’s second project involving Katz’s.
His previous commercial for the deli, Twins, was nominated for and ultimately won the New York Emmy for Commercial — Single Spot. The New York Emmy recipients list credits Heller, m ss ng p eces, David Hurwitz and Joe Bressler on the project.
That earlier spot also had an unusually personal origin story: according to m ss ng p eces, Heller made the Katz’s commercial in exchange for getting married at the deli.
This time, the assignment is less matrimony and more carbonation.
Stiller’s Soda was co-founded by Stiller and food-and-beverage entrepreneur Alex Doman as a modern take on classic soda. The current lineup includes Shirley Cola, Root Beer, Lemon Lime and Shirley Temple, with each can containing 30 calories and 7 grams of sugar.
The brand positions itself against the increasingly crowded prebiotic and functional-soda category by emphasizing a more familiar proposition: it is supposed to taste like soda.
The Katz’s partnership makes particular sense for a brand built around Stiller’s own New York upbringing and nostalgia for classic drinks. Katz’s, open since 1888, remains one of the city’s most recognizable dining institutions.
And now, for the first time in its long history, a Shirley Temple is joining the menu.
Somewhere, the pastrami is demanding a meeting.
