Mid-Autumn 2017
Advertising．Strategic Creative
Häagen-Dazs
In addition to celebrating the various festivals throughout the year in style, it has become a tradition in itself for our team to create designs and advertisements for brands during these festive occasions. The Mid-Autumn Festival may well be the busiest time for us, since this Chinese festival is a golden period for business promotion in certain industries, including food and beverage.
As the signature ice-cream mooncakes of Häagen-Dazs took on a brand new look in the Mid-Autumn of 2017, a new theme and advertising campaign were needed to align the shopfront, outdoor, online and social media advertising effort.
Häagen-Dazs
Mid-Autumn 2017
Advertising．Strategic Creative
In addition to celebrating the various festivals throughout the year in style, it has become a tradition in itself for our team to create designs and advertisements for brands during these festive occasions. The Mid-Autumn Festival may well be the busiest time for us, since this Chinese festival is a golden period for business promotion in certain industries, including food and beverage.
As the signature ice-cream mooncakes of Häagen-Dazs took on a brand new look in the Mid-Autumn of 2017, a new theme and advertising campaign were needed to align the shopfront, outdoor, online and social media advertising effort.
sector
food and beverage
work
creative direction / key visual / print design / food styling / food photography / out-of-home advertisement design / online display advertisement design / point-of-sale material design / copywriting / video production and editing / motion graphic
sector
food and beverage
work
creative direction / key visual / print design / food styling / food photography / out-of-home advertisement design / online display advertisement design / point-of-sale material design / copywriting / video production and editing / motion graphic
Concept.
It was not difficult to distinguish the brand from its competitors, for their products are seemingly different. The challenge remained to position ice-cream mooncake in a traditional, mythical Chinese festival. In defining the design, we tried to understand the product and the target audience from a new perspective, keeping in mind the brand concept, “extraordinary”.
Our creative team sat down to brainstorm visuals associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival and the brand, such as a child’s look of surprise, a face showing relief to escape from saccharine lotus paste, and a look of content that only ice-cream can give. All images convey the message “different” well enough. What remained was to tell a good story, fitting the brand snuggly into a festival where families get together and share gifts and delicacies.
“Redefining your Mid-Autumn Festival” thus became the backbone of the creative concept. Sharing, gathering and blessings become extraordinary with the Mid-Autumn Festival series of Häagen-Dazs. The redefined Mid-Autumn Festival is one full of wonder.
“Redefining your Mid-Autumn Festival” thus became the backbone of the creative concept. Sharing, gathering and blessings become extraordinary with the Mid-Autumn Festival series of Häagen-Dazs. The redefined Mid-Autumn Festival is one full of wonder.
“Redefining your Mid-Autumn Festival” thus became the backbone of the creative concept. Sharing, gathering and blessings become extraordinary with the Mid-Autumn Festival series of Häagen-Dazs. The redefined Mid-Autumn Festival is one full of wonder.
Visual Experience& Design.
After settling on the theme, our creative team was eager to present a new and conversational design through a visual experience and provide something that could be shared on social media. In recent years, the brand’s competitors have been mostly using celebrities in their advertisements. The client made it clear that they did not want to follow suit and spend a huge sum on TV ad. This plan actually supported our design ideas.
We tried to link “wonder” with the French origin of the brand to create a novel visual experience. We wanted viewers to associate something different with the Mid-Autumn Festival after watching the ad. The jade rabbit came to our head. But our version of the jade rabbit was not the conventional one. How about a rabbit that looks like the one from Alice in the Wonderland?
An adorable rabbit in costumes can invoke unlimited imagination and possibilities. And to think about it, the most shared items on social media, after raging comments, are children and animals. A Mid-Autumn Festival ad does not have to feature celebrities. A rabbit can certainly do, too.
Execution.
The theme might be some small animals, but it would be sloppy to get away with stock photos. There was no way the design ideas could be presented in a few images anyway. We wanted to show different positions and expressions of the rabbits in the multi-media design. We also wanted the creative process to be happy and humanistic. Only then would the end result convey happiness.
For a few weeks, we kept looking for rabbit owners in our friend circles, because we knew these rabbits would be loved and pampered. In selecting the “models”, we looked carefully at the fur color, the eyes, the ears, and how energetic they were. It was not an easy task, but one has to be persistent to achieve good designs. In the end, we chose three different rabbits to represent three main products.
We invited an animal photographer who is also an animal lover to take the stills for us. During the shooting and breaks, we arranged for the video team to capture all the interesting moments of the three “models”. Our creative team then edited these footages into a video incorporating the advertising theme and message, which was shown in the shops, and on outdoor advertising screens and social media. Shopfront, print, bus body, outdoor and online advertising was fully aligned to present the new Mid-Autumn Festival series of Häagen-Dazs.
