Promotion

Grommet Doesn’t Sell Boring

Grommet is a company I’ve never heard of, but after watching their brand launch video I definitely intend to check them out. Why? Because according to the video below they don’t sell boring stuff.

The in-house creative team at Grommet approached Tom Allen, co-founder, and CD at design and animation studio Buff Motion in Brighton, England to produce an animated promotional video to launch their new brand. The result is a fun little short that highlights some of the products they sell.

The goal was to develop a piece of content that would promote the platform, widen Grommet’s audience and introduce their current followers to a fresh new look. I think they nailed it. There is a nice use of color, typography, simple animations, and a solid voice-over that brings the entire package together while highlighting some of the product lines. And the shapes used seem to play off of the new Grommet logo. I say “new” because I’m not sure what the old logo looked like. This is a really nice promo that gets the message across without beating you over the head with what they are advertising. OK, time to check out the Grommet online store.

Soon and Igepa Recycle to Create a Fantasy World.

To promote their recycled paper line and the idea of recycling, Igepa Belux turned to the creative team at design firm Soon. Using old magazines, Soon transformed the pages into a bright colorful world of flowers, insects, and birds, giving the pages a second life.

The design team at Soon transformed magazines and print advertisements into three dimensional sculptures of flower arrangements, intricate insects, and voluminous greenery by cutting, folding, weaving, bending and gluing the materials and crafting them into a spectacular new world. The end result was a full color brochure, a behind the scenes video, and a series of prints, showing how the original materials had been transformed.

Penny Dreadful – Dracula.

A little over a month ago I posted a video from Beakus featuring an animated short for the new Sky series “Penny Dreadful” on the book “Frankenstein“. The video below is the second installment and the focus this time around is the book “Dracula” Narrated by Matthew Sweet (not the musician). Sweet takes us on an insightful journey through the history of the book, hidden meanings, and glimpse at how Dracula became an iconic figure in contemporary pop culture. Once again the animation is stylistically wonderful interweaving animation with brief segments of live action footage “Penny Dreadful” is a major drama series on Sky created by John Logan and starring Josh Hartnett, Timothy Dalton, Eva Green and Billie Piper.

Update:

I somehow missed the third installment for “Dorian Gray” which is equally as good as the first two.

Where’s The Beef? Morris Grassfed Animated by Joe Donaldson.

One of the really nice things about the ubiquity of high-speed internet connections being available for everything from your phone to your TV set is the fact that promotional advertising is getting better. What I mean by this is, the fact that rich content that is longer than thirty seconds is available, and offers a compelling reason to watch. Most fifteen and thirty second spots done for TV follow the same formulaic pattern, and are easily tuned out, skipped, or muted rendering them virtually worthless. People pay a ton of money to have an ad produced and shown to an audience that isn’t paying attention. The point of this being, that in the new world order of converged media, you now have the option to create a longer form of promotional advertising that is engaging, and tells a story.

Back in February Joe Donaldson released an animated short for the New York Times, that received a ton of accolades for the quality of the animation, and the story telling component. That video inspired Julie Morris at Morris Grassfed Beef to contact him about creating an animated short promoting their new online ordering system. The video that they produced goes far beyond a simple instructional promo spot. It tells a story about how Morris Grassfed Beef was started, the quality of the product, where and how they deliver, and how to order online.

Donaldson’s animation and illustrative style, combined with a great script and solid narration help to break the mold and give the audience a compelling reason to watch the entire spot. At a minute and fifteen seconds, the video below demonstrates how a longer format ad can hook and hold an audience. The cadence and flow of the spot, timed to well executed visuals and high production value show how effective storytelling can be in long format advertising.

Oh and this piece was created in 4 weeks with no revisions. A complete explanation of the work process Donaldson employed can be found on Motionographer.