PRESS,OOH,INSTORE _ 2018
The Helpers
Christmas comes around every year with the same briefs of snowmen, snowflakes and candy canes. This year, for EE we wanted to push the brief, we wanted to give them something special, something own-able and something they have never thought of before.
As every year, at the end of summer the brief for EE Christmas came rolling in. This would be my first year take on the Christmas brief for EE. Previous years have been functional, however, this year, I wanted to create something memorable. An idea that pushed the brand and show how flexible their brand can be.
Working in a team of two, myself and my Creative Director, we presented an idea that passed through with almost zero amends. Unheard of.. Our idea was to capture a spirit of Christmas from behind the scenes, a set of unique characters that work tirelessly around the year to bring customers the best tech and offers that EE has to offer, perfectly matched to each individual.
We then looked at ways to bring this to life and what 'behind the scenes' looks like. We wanted to give a sneak peak into their fantasy world, as a first look into how they prepare for Christmas.
This brief started by looking at ways we could bring the festive spirit, showcase, tech and offers whilst maintaining a visual cue to EE's brand identity through characters.
After a few variants of shape and size the final characters were formed out of the recognisable EE double circles. To give the characters unique personalities and festive spirit we scamped up some concepts for the 3D as reference.
Character design
We worked closely with very talented 3D artist in Mexico called AARON MARTINEZ. I've been a big fan of his work and was super excited to have him on board to bring these 3D characters to life. Aaron has his own beautiful, playful style, so during the conceptual phase of this brief, i didn't want to be too prescriptive to him, i wanted to see how he would interpret this brief and what he would come up with. Here were the results.
Once the characters were complete, we were desperate to bring them to life and figure out how these cute guys move and behave.
To bring them to life we approached FrameStore to help us with the animation. We briefed them on two characters that we could use across digital and social assets, with the ability to loop.They were super excited to get these characters and make them move for us.
The second part of the brief was to create the world that these characters live in and the fascinating machines they use to deliver the latest deals.
Creating the right environment was key. Not only to help us deliver the right message within an ad but also, these assets will also be used to decorate in-store.
Knowing the three offers EE plan to focus on this Christmas, we set out to create a custom machine for each of them. Each machine will give a visual cue to the message we are delivering whilst maintaining an over all feel they all live within the same fantasy world.
This part was the most challenging part of the brief. We found that the creatives quickly became very busy the more we tried to tell a narrative with one visual. It took a lot of scamping, rounds of feedback both with client and again working with Aaron to get to the final result. It was great to see the final result held on to it's original concept.
The final part of the campaign was to work with EE's other agencies to help this work across instore, online and on the road.
The campaign can be seen, across, digital OOH, Press, online and across almost 600 of EE's stores.
We always knew that we'd be helping other agencies align to our creative. It was a difficult task to manage deadlines whilst keeping a tight hold of the core creative concept. Despite everything we pulled it off and can been seen across the UK. Everyone who touched this project fell in love with it and it's something i'm really proud to have created.
Take a look bellow to see just a few of the places where this campaign really came to life.
This campaign was a true labour of love. The feedback was overwhelming, it's impossible not to fall in love with the characters, that deliver the true spirit of Christmas.
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