South African digital content creation studio Luma has produced three new 15-second digitally animated television commercials for insurance aggregator Hippo.co.za. Previously famous for its homage to Starship’s We Built This City, the new commercials take the Hippo brand ambassador to the next level.
Both ads feature a more lifelike hippo articulating the brand’s core positioning – quick turnaround time, multiple points of contact and financial savings.
Says Luma creative director Gerhard Painter says: “Injecting life into the hippo and casting him in a variety of settings – loaded into a cannon and being shot off into oblivion, dining at a restaurant table and having him literally crush costs in a monster truck – we were able to capture the essence of Hippo.co.za’s leading man and value proposition.’
The first commercial features the hippo blasting off from a cannon, demonstrating the speed at which Hippo gets you quotes. The second ad featuring him dining at a restaurant, focuses on the various ways to get in touch with Hippo. The third and most recent rips the lid off any we’ve seen before as it shows Hippo literally crushing the costs in a fully loaded monster truck.
Commenting on the “how’ aspect of the animation project, Painter says: “We planned a substantial revamp of the hippo’s anatomy and skeletal structure that would allow us to push his movements to the extreme and make his facial animation more believable.’
The scripts required the team of illustrators, designers and animators to place the character in “visually rich’ environments that would create theatre required to engage the viewer and tell the story in a short, high-impact, compelling manner.
“On the whole, the change is a subtle but noticeable increase in visual quality between the old and new hippo, he’s the same trusted name the consumer has come to know and love, just better, more beautifully rendered and with a greater range of emotional expression,’ says Painter.
