Moonpig, the UK’s leading online greeting card and gifting platform has created its latest advert featuring the Moonpiglets and this time they are promoting the wide range of gifts the brand offers. The campaign continues Moonpig's journey towards becoming the ultimate gifting companion.
Developed by Creature London, we once again see Moonpig’s brand mascots embark on a mission to find the perfect gift. This time, they’ve made their way to the gifting floor, snuffling through the boxes to find various wonderful gifts that Moonpig offer - from flowers to Lego, balloons to mugs. The campaign was led by senior creative Megan Egan and to learn more about it, we caught up with Megan to talk everything snuffly.
What was the brief?
Everyone knows three things about Moonpig: the jingle, the pigs, and the fact they sell cards. But did you know they also sell gifts? An incredible array of gifts in fact - everything from chocolates to flowers, perfume to Lego and hampers to balloons. The brief was to make sure everyone knows this.
How did the initial pitch/brainstorming phase go?
It’s been a while now since we first launched the Moonpiglets – their cute, snuffly brand mascots. We’ve established they represent cards, but now we needed to include gifts.
There was a lot of discussion around whether the pigs’ outfits (which are currently a metaphor for the card) could represent the gifts too, but after much debate it was decided against. So whatever the solution was, it would involve our Moonpiglets interacting with gifts, rather than being the gifts themselves. Simple.
We came up with a few different ways in, but there was a clear winner from the beginning, and it involved a lot of Moonpig delivery boxes.
What was the process behind ideating the concept?
Our initial internal brainstorming resulted in us having three fleshed out routes to take to client. We created initial scripts and key visuals to bring the ideas to life, before eventually deciding on the winner which we took forward to our production partner, Glassworks.
What was the production process like?
Production was smooth sailing thanks to the talented folks over at Glassworks VFX. We started out with hand-drawn storyboards which were later animated to work out our timings for each scene.
Next came what I call the ‘grey blob stage’, although that’s doing it an injustice. Crude 3D animations began to give us an idea of the space as well as basic pig expressions. Agreeing on timings was crucial at this stage before we started adding lighting and texture, where the real magic happens.
I won’t pretend to understand how they did it, but with a bit of rendering and lighting science Glassworks brought the scenes to life before our eyes, from grey blobs to adorable, fuzzy little Moonpiglets. Once agreed, it was into music composition with Curtis Stansfield and then our favourite part: sound with Creative Out-Post, before heading back to Glassworks for the finishing touch – the colour grade.
What was the biggest challenge during production? How did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge was how do we show how many gifts Moonpig offer without having to build all of them in 3D, which is obviously a huge job. The answer was using their gift boxes.
We built a few hero gifts, and created an abstract warehouse landscape made entirely out of piles upon piles of gift boxes, implying that there are many more gifts unseen.
What is one funny or notable thing that happened during production?
Our favourite part of every Moonpig production: the sound session - where we get the opportunity to jump in the sound booths ourselves to do our best pig impressions. So next time you see the ad, keep an ear out for all those oinks and snuffles, which are just a bunch of Creatures pitched up.
What’s the main message of this project and why does it matter?
That Moonpig do gifts, and not just any gifts – a huge array of amazing gifts! It’s all about brand awareness, so they’re seen as more than just a card company.
How long did it take from inception to delivery?
Just under 3 months.
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
I hope people see the value in Moonpig rather than perhaps viewing it as the place to go for a last-minute birthday card, and instead see it as the place to go for birthday cards and gifts.
Credit list for the work?
Brand
Company name: Moonpig
CMO: Kristof Fahy
Director of Marketing & Brand: Simon Hills
Brand Lead: Bex Holt
Creative
Creative agency: Creature London
Chief Executive Officer: Dan Cullen-Shute
Chief Creative Officers: Ben Middleton & Stu Outhwaite-Noel
Senior Creative: Meg Egan
Chief Strategy Officer: Andrew Gibson
Strategy Director: Josh Dickins
Producer: Lilly Alter
Account Director: Sam Dempsey
Media agency: Mediacom North
Production
Production Company: Glassworks
Executive Producer: Tasha Laranjo
Producer: Andrew Patrick
Animation & 3D
Animation Director & 2D Animation: Hugo Rodriguez Rodriguez
Storyboards & 2D Animation: Lewis Barr & Lina Ozolina
3D Supervision & Lead 3D Animator: Alastair Hearsum
3D animation: Daniel Hope & Richenda Wheeler
3D lookdev / lighting: Davide Uccellani
3D rigging & modelling: Dan Lane
3D modelling: David Head
3D simulation: Georgios Papaioannou
2D
Flame: Grant McKean & Ally Burnett
Colour
Grade: Jonny Thorpe
