To pay tribute to the Winter Olympic debut of Julian Yee, Malaysia’s first figure skater Olympian, IOC Worldwide partner Samsung has launched an animated short feature called ‘Julian and His Magical Skates’that was created on a Samsung Galaxy Note8.
The brand film was drawn with Samsung’s signature S Pen, the campaign was created in harness with Ensemble IPG Mediabrands Malaysia creative agency) and falls within Samsung global ‘Do What You Can’t’ marketing platform..
This ‘magical animated story of a boy who did what he couldn’t, with his magical ice skates’ is hubbed around a bespoke digital site at http://www.samsung.com/my/magicalskates/ and is spearheaded by a short feature called ‘Julian and His Magical Skates’.
The spot is a tribute to Yee, who will make his debut in at the PyeongChang 2018 Games, and is a tale of humble beginnings, persistence, passion, pushing boundaries, overcoming obstacles and victory.
The production took a month from beginning to end and saw the creative team, working in collaboration with animated post production outfit MFX and sound designers Fuse, watch Yee’s competitive performances on film to fine-tune the cartoon character’s movements and ensure the viewers feel the fluidity and art form of skating.
“This was a culmination of lots of people coming together to do what they thought they couldn’t, which truly embodies the spirit of the “Do What You Can’t” campaign, to defy barriers and achieve the impossible. Samsung stops at nothing to create innovative technologies so that people can do impossible things,” said Samsung Malaysia chief marketing officer Elaine Soh.
“We are proud to support Julian, whose personal story serves as inspiration to us all; and we are inspired with the work of Ensemble who has managed to weave this magical story so beautifully and seamlessly with the use of innovative technology.”
“When we heard the story of Julian, it really captured our hearts, and revealed the essence of Samsung’s ‘Do What You Can’t’ campaign. The team set ourselves the task of imagining how we could tell his story, and that story literally came to life on the Galaxy Note8 as a canvas. That’s the magic of technology at work,” added executive creative director of Ensemble Worldwide Chan Woei Hern.
Woei Hern added, “Going old school and illustrating by hand allowed the artists to go back to the roots of 2D animation and work on characterisation. In the case of this film, the product placement made absolute sense when it came together at the end, as it was an essential part of the storytelling. When it came to the music, we challenged our sound design team to watch the film, and lay out their composition based on each scene. There are a lot of nice touches to complement the different scenes.”
Comment:
We admire the creative synergy that sees the content created on the very product that it is marketing.
Plus, there is plenty to admire about the creative itself.
The campaign is one local market example of Samsung’s global Winter Games work which is connected worldwide through the hashtags #Pyeongchang2018 and #DoWhatYouCant.
The idea behind ‘Do What You Can’t’ is that the brand helps people around the world to defy barriers and achieve the impossible: stopping at nothing to create innovative technologies so that people can do impossible things.
Samsung’s global umbrella ‘Do What You Can’t’ global big idea also saw the February launch of a new flagship multi-market film called ‘Human Nature’.
Links:
Samsung (Malaysia)
https://www.youtube.com/user/SamsungMalaysia
https://twitter.com/SamsungMalaysia
https://www.facebook.com/Samsung
Ensemble Worldwide
IPG Mediabrands
https://www.ipgmediabrands.com/
