Metalcasting is transformative.

That’s at least one thing you can take away from a new advertisement by vodka producer Smirnoff. In the ad, a metalcaster takes the awards and trophies the company has allegedly won for its great tasting product and melts them down in an electric furnace. The foundryman then pours the molten metal into an open mold, where it solidifies into words that spell out what the company really wants to win: “The People’s Challenge.”

Whether the creative team at Smirnoff intended some deeper meaning or not, the advertisement speaks to the utilitarian nature of metalcasting. The process takes something virtually useless, like scrap metal, and turns it into something useful, like a butterfly valve. Smirnoff uses this transformative power to turn its awards, which “look great on a shelf,” into a symbol of something useful: how people think the product tastes.

Another thing you can take away from the advertisement is that Smirnoff is quite proud of its vodka. But that’s a subject for a different blog entirely.