You Have Cat to Be Kitten Me Right Meow

Few celebrities are as involved in their brand as Ben Stiller is for Stiller’s Soda. I have heard that he is a highly active participant in the marketing / creative team’s slack channel, and is very much a hands-on person.

It’s also objectively hilarious to think about the rush of adrenaline Ben must have felt when he got a ton of laughing reactions to a slack message for the first time. For my cubicle warriors out there, you remember the first time that dopamine rush hit you when you sent a well-timed GIF after something funny happened at the office. Like sure, I imagine winning an Emmy is great but have you ever gotten Mikayla in Finance to laugh at your slack message?

So, when Stiller’s Soda was announcing it was coming to the famous Katz’s Deli in NYC, it’s no surprise that the project eventually landed in the lap of Nick Heller, aka New York Nico, aka New York’s Unofficial Talent Scout, aka one of the best creators in the world right now, aka the guy that made a local record store a global phenomenon, aka the guy that directed the Lebron x Hennessy Return Part 2, aka the guy that GOT MARRIED AT KATZ’S.

But doing a typical iPhone video (like the ones that have made Nick viral many times before) wasn’t enough for Nick. You’ll see what I mean in the video below and then we’ll hear why Nick decided on a new vision and also more BTS of making this spot in my Q&A with him at the bottom of this article.

The video was shot during normal operating hours in an active Katz’s Deli. The full shoot was about 2 hours. Ben Stiller mistakenly dresses as Munkustrap from Cats the Musical. Ben and Nick make fun of the modern day press tour, where random celebrities are paired up with even more random influencers to do street interviews, or eat pizza outside, or get set up on a blind date, or gamble money on Polymarket (coming soon probably), or have a manufactured “deep conversation”.

There’s a lot of things that work about this video. (subscribe to read more, it’s $0)