Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.
Snails and robots are back on our screens to launch new products in the FMCG and office space; on pack promotions still work; and Pyrotec produces a coder to increase product output.
Trail blazing snail
Yogi Sip has launched two new flavours in the market: Cookies and Cream and Cappuccino with a new campaign, featuring a… snail. Yup, a snail.
The press release describes Danone Southern Africa as “blazing a trail” in the area of digitally animated television commercial work with this latest campaign and the snail as “endearing”. Those are descriptors one would not normally associate with a snail, but I’m reliably informed that the animation work done by digital content creation studio Luma on the campaign conceptualised by Y&R pushes the boundaries.
Riverstone Films briefed Luma to breathe life into the human-sized snail which is a “visual metaphor for the plummeting energy levels experienced during the mid-afternoon slump” at work. Okay then.
The brief was to communicate the brand’s promise that Yogi Sip is the ‘sip snack that keeps you going’.
Combining a natural on-camera performance with creature effects that could not be shot in live action, Luma completed the illusion by using 3D animation to lend natural movement to the snail’s tentacles.Aimed at an active, youthful (16 – 24 years) target audience, the creature effects were created by veteran puppet-maker and animatronic whiz, Roger Titley. The commercial was directed by Riverstone’s Jeremy Holden for Y&R Johannesburg and the creative director was Bibi Lötter.
“I’m very demanding when it comes to the visual effects in my commercials,” said Holden.
Transformed office space
Angel Shack is a range of modular office furniture that aims to transform the office space with a transformer robot (oh dear – ed.).
Yes, another one. And a SWAT team. No angels. But robots are still pretty cool and this office furniture company will certainly get attention by using a robot to promote its new GameChanger range of shape-shifting office furniture that can transform any work space.
The commercial was shot over two days with a film crew and a radio-controlled helicopter fitted with a camera, supplied by Visual Air Production. The intention was to emulate the blockbuster production style that viewers are used to seeing on the big screen, while demonstrating the furniture range’s remarkable ability to take the shape of almost any office environment.
Directed and shot by Johnny Cohen of EyeMagnet, the commercial is a combination of live action and computer-generated images that were created and animated by the team at Blade Works, led by Shaun Froneman, while the compositing, finishing and visual effects supervision were handled by Jean du Plessis of Blade.
The ad is currently on rotation on CNBC.
Lunchtime
In its biggest promotion to date, Cadbury received over 1.1 million entries in its Lunch Bar Lottery promo. R500 000 in cash was shared by 100 winners.
Consumers needed to purchase a specially marked promotional Lunch Bar pack and SMS the last six digits of the barcode to the number on pack.
The promotion featured across four Lunch Bar sizes– Lunch Bar Large, Lunch Bar Dream Large, Lunch Bar Man Size and Lunch Bar Mini. The Lunch Bar Lottery promotion was supported by high-impact in store displays, a television commercial and national radio spots.
“We are thrilled with the number of entries received and very happy to have given Lunch Bar consumers the chance to win their share of such a mammoth cash prize,” said Andrea Fell, Kraft Foods senior brand manager: chocolate bars.
New laser coder launched
PyrotecPackMark, the brand within Pyrotec that supplies coding and labelling equipment, has just released its Markem-ImajeSmartLase C150 and C350 Laser Coders. Laser coding is a permanent coding solution for producing date and batch codes, ensuring complete traceability. A key advantage of this option is that it eliminates the need for messy and expensive consumables. However, the primary benefit of the C150 and C350 is its 99.6% availability ratio.
“The unavailability of a coder refers to the proportion of a timespan that a system is unavailable or offline. This is usually a result of the system failing to function because of an unplanned event, or due to routine maintenance. With the C150 and C350, manufacturers can be assured of a reliable, high-performance laser that is able to cope with even the most demanding production lines,” explains Brandon Pearce, General Manager of PyrotecPackMark.
The SmartLase C150, C350 and C350L have been specifically configured for the food industry, and are equipped to code paper-based containers or packages such as those used in frozen food, confectionary or dried process goods. These coders increase the character printing capacity of one code from 30 to 120 characters. For the beverage industry, the C150S and C350S are specifically designed to code PET bottles and increase the output rates from 1200 to 1800 bottles per minute. The C350 is also ideal for coding labels.
– Shelf Life by Louise Marsland is a weekly column on MarkLives. Tweet new product, packaging and design launches to @louise_marsland or email her at louise.marsland at gmail.com.
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Louise Marsland has written about the FMCG, media, marketing and advertising industry for 18 years of her 25 year media career as a former Editor of magazines AdVantage, Marketing Mix and Progressive Retailing; as well as websites Bizcommunity.com and FMCGFiles. She currently edits the weekly Wednesday Media & Marketing Page for The New Age newspaper; and is the co-founder and Publishing Editor of SA’s newly launched industry trendwatching portal, TREND. at www.trendlives.info, in partnership with MarkLives.com.
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