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How to make going back to school look pretty awesome

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In my youth, there were few things that irritated me more than the glaring “Back to School” signs that seemed to adorn every retail outlet under the sun during the summer holidays, seemingly taunting happy children everywhere with the notion that their gleeful abandon was to be depressingly short-lived. Of course, as an adult, the concept of a six week holiday sounds not only like the definition of heaven, but like a little bit of a joke, and as such, it’s difficult to sympathise with children who complain that six weeks “Just isn’t enough time.” Still though, there’s something undeniably patronising about most back to school campaigns that tends to paint the summer holidays as a mild inconvenience, so it came as something as a shock when I stumbled across this latest work from BBH London and found myself applauding its anarchic whimsy.

Prepare For Awesome – “Hoxton Chap”

The new campaign for children’s shoe market leaders Clarks is that rarest of back to school campaigns; one aimed not at the parents, but at the children. The result is a loud, colourful animated campaign that doesn’t talk down to kids, but adopts their language and references in a series of spots that honestly took me back to my own youth in a way. The sound and visuals together really feel like an attack on your senses, with ultra-bright colours vividly combining with over the top textures in sound. The idea of targeting the kids themselves, and making the brand more relevant and exciting is a smart one indeed, as I could quite honestly see kids watching these ads and demanding that their parents take them to Clarks when the dreaded back to school shop rolls around towards the tail end of August.

Prepare For Awesome – “Tizz Hope”

The “Prepare For Awesome” campaign by BBH London’s Black Sheep Studios in-house production team, switches between real and animated worlds in four 30 second spots that provide a series of entertaining pep talks that aim to empower kids about going back to school. With its furious energy and colourful animation, it’s a distinct step away from traditional school uniform campaigns. The campaign was illustrated by Nick Edwards, the award-winning cartoonist who recently won an Emmy Award for his work on the Cartoon Network series, Uncle Grandpa, and as such, there’s a really distinct, high-quality look to the visuals that put them right up there with the best that modern kids TV has to offer.

Prepare For Awesome – “Purely Go”

The bombastic sound design for the campaign was created by Raja Sehgal from Grand Central sound studios (GCRS) in London, who said of the campaign: "This project represents a fresh, new approach for Clarks, and it's fair to say that it’s lead as much by the sound as it is by the visuals. After an initial meeting with the director and the creatives at BBH, I set out to create a soundscape that would really push the animation. The films started as a set of very basic line drawings, with the final animation being worked on right up until the very last day. We received an updated animation every couple of days and with that we had to create new sound to match. We recorded lots of bespoke sounds, including the shoebox, the paper explosions and the hits and knocks. The screams of the kids were manipulated to carry through each shot, to the very end of the spot.”

Prepare For Awesome – “Harlem Spin”

The films were directed by Thomas Ormonde, who was given the seemingly impossible brief of making a series of films that would actually get kids pumped for school. If you would have given the 11-year –old me this brief I would have told you it’s impossible, but given the results on display here, I think it’s fair to say that everyone involved really pulled it out of the bag!

Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer, struggling musician and perpetual man-child from Kidderminster in the UK.

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