Overview
UGREEN reached out to Artex to help them break into the American market. UGREEN is the dominant phone charger brand in China to this day, but their reach stateside was very limited. They wanted to create a pre-roll brand campaign that produced un-skippable ads and create catchy brand statements that stuck in viewers minds.
Process
This project was one of our full-service offerings, meaning we took a creative and strategy brief from the client and turned out a campaign concept directly to the client, offering a turn-key approach that made the whole thing easy for them.
From a creative perspective, we wanted to make sure something happened in our spot right away that was a bit ridiculous. In a pre-roll context, its so easy to completely tune out the ad if it doesn’t do something to grab the viewer right away. This is how we landed on the green energy VFX, not only because we could make it explode out of screens and fill the room with alien light as a hook, but also it created a memorable image that represented one of the brand’s key selling points.
The overall goal was to create very “sticky” messaging, meaning stuff that has the chance to get subconsciously stuck in people’s minds after they see it, like it or not. The spots follow an identical formula of supernatural energy levitating phones and computers, comically dumbfounding the person in the scene who’s never heard of UGREEN. “UGREEN” and FAST are repeated intentionally, creating a back-and-forth ping pong of mnemonics, all of which repeat parts of the tagline, which is a repetition of the brand’s name, creating a branding Russian doll, onion, parfait, whatever you like. We wanted everyone walking away with the word UGREEN echoing in their head.
Our approach was a smash hit for the brand, given our full-service approach. Knowing the full extent of what we could achieve with our post team, we were able to write directly for our capabilities in a way that maxed out value for the budget, as opposed to concepting first and shopping later.
Acting was a key element in driving the humor and stickiness of the dialogue, and we’re thrilled with the talent that we cast. Each brought a set of ideas to the material and quickly used their imagination and developed playful rhythm with their scene partners.
And even with the high-end look and VFX, this was still shot with a somewhat modestly sized crew. Our budget-stretching expertise and love of the product created opportunities for us to hit home runs regardless of head count.
Results
This project produced 4x :15 pre-roll ads, used in paid media across social media and web, including a Christmas spot that is being used to drive holiday sales.
Artex was responsible for the creative strategy, concept, production and post-production of the spot.
This one was so much fun- we can’t wait to do it again, or at least until you realize that you do in fact need UGREEN.
