Mio: CROC BLOCK

Credits & Description:

Category: Illustration

Advertiser: KRAFT

Product/Service: MIO

Agency: TAXI NEW YORK

Chief Creative Officer: Steve Mykolyn (Taxi)

Executive Creative Director: Dave Clemans (Taxi)

Art Director: Stephen Leps (Taxi)

Writer: Michael Pierantozzi (Taxi)

Agency Producer: Joyce Lee (Taxi)

Agency Producer: Holly Flaisher (Taxi)

Creative Director: Eben Mears (Psyop)

Creative Director: Jonathan Saunders (Psyop)

Executive Producer: Lydia Holness (Psyop)

Producer: Michael Neithardt (Psyop)

Assistant Producer: Anu Nagaraj (Psyop)

Designer: Naomi Chen (Psyop)

Lead 3D Artist: Pakorn Bupphavesa (Psyop)

Lead 3D Artist: Alvin Bae (Psyop)

Head Of Lighting: Jonah Friedman (Psyop)

Lead Nuke Artist: Nick Tanner (Psyop)

Nuke Artist: Pat Porter (Psyop)

Animator: Stephanie Russell (Psyop)

Animator: Anthony Travieso (Psyop)

Media placement: TV/Internet :15s Spot - Youtube, Network/Cable U.S. - 28 March 2012 -October 2012



Describe the brief from the client

Kraft’s new MiO is a pocket-sized bottle of liquid, packed with flavour, that changes water from utterly boring to as delicious as your taste desires. Our brief was to reach out to Millennials, a group that’s all about seeking and embracing change, and launch MiO as a like-minded soul, a customisable beverage brand that’s all about change too.



Describe the challenges and key objectives

While Europe has seen somewhat similar products, in the US, portable liquid flavour is entirely new. Therefore, we knew we’d need to lace demonstrations of how the product is used within our messaging.

Broadcast would be a huge part of the media buy. However, as we began scripting, our story lines somehow seemed contrived. We realised we lacked important, existing equity in consumer’s minds of how pop-culture actually interacts with our product. When we tried animation, however, it magically got around this. It gave us a license to create a world of Millennials using new MiO that didn’t feel fake.



Describe how you arrived at the final design

To badge MiO’s change-agent spirit, we’d crafted the tagline, ‘Shake things up’. With the work, we didn’t want to simply illustrate our scripts. We wanted to prove our brand personality by shaking up the animation category itself. Using a team of freehand illustrators together with proprietary software, we created a pack of fully CGI-rendered animals unlike anything ever seen. They enjoy MiO as they constantly explore the new and different in their local watering hole.



Give some indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The results? Sales tripled within a month of the campaign’s launch. Having already reached $100m in sales, we’re on track to more than double that this year. This puts this spanking, new brand’s growth rate in the top one-half of 1% of all product launches in US beverages.