Simply Stunning Animation
The BBC has built a reputation over many years for creating stunning station and special program promos. Their animation promoting the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics is no exception. BAFTA winning Director Marc Craste worked with designer Jon Klassen and Studio AKA in creating the stunning spot and several title sequences. The 40 second short animated film tells a rich fable of a legendary quest in which an Inuit hero retrieves a spiritual stone that has been taken by a giant bear from a mystical totem. In the process of his mission our hero draws on his skills in a series of challenging & physically brutal Olympic style sports to recover the precious ice locked stone, thus restoring light and peace to his dark and troubled world.’ Watch this beautiful ad after the jump…
The spots capture the spirit of the winter games through their wonderful story-telling and visual richness. When compared to the underwhelmingly predictable slush our local broadcasters have served up, I wonder how many ratings and how much advertising revenue will remain unrealized as a result of the pedestrian approach to promoting the 2010 Winter Olympics taken by Australia’s Channel 9.
If you’d like some help to create a memorable brand fable for your product or organisation, why not drop us a line?
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
Corporate Image
Tags: 2010-winter-olympics, BBC-winter-Olympics, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, brand-gesture, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, jon-Klassen, Marc-Craste, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Studio-AKA, Vancouver-winter-olympics, winter-olympic-promo, winter-olympics
Wow in comparison BBC have made something unique and magical. Channel 9 would have thought their idea was genius…i’m afraid not.
Tim, with this sort of thing it is about where the bar is set, then great creative expression becomes cultural. At the moment the bar is set pretty low in Australia with the exception of some of the SBS work like these: http://www.tanyacreer.com.au/stills/sbs-news-tsunami/
Sure, this is a beautiful and stylishly stark piece of animation and is a much , but I have two problems with it.
Firstly, I don’t think it is distinctively ‘BBC’ at all. They’re a pretty schizophrenic organsiation at the best of times and this is a problem I have with a lot of their communication, but this just doesn’t help. They stick a tiny logo at the end of the piece and.. well.. that’s it. Now I KNOW that it’s a programme promo… but I’m not sure it does the brand or messaging basics. When is it happening? What is it? I’m afraid, in terms of basic marketing messaging, the second does a much better job (although YES it’s cheesy and very mainstream).
Secondly, I’d much rather the BBC spent their (public) money on high-end, quality programming, not self-run ads for sports shows. I’m not saying that stuff like this NEVER has a place on the BBC — and the point about ‘cultural creativity’ is a great one — but to me, as a UK taxpayer — and, not to mention, a huge fan of the BBC — this just seems a little self indulgent.
I wonder how the budgets compared…?
“much more watchable piece”… I meant to type
Thanks for your thoughts Luke — you make some great points. A broadcast brand having a consistent and distinctive look is unfortunately almost at the expense of great creative. I that buy-off I’d rather the BBC go for entertaining and evocative over corporate and consistent. One thing about the Olympics is we know what it is and we definitely wont be able to miss when it starts. At the end of the day, the BBC like our Channel 7 have the broadcast rights, you can’t watch the Games on any other channel, so I see the role of the ad as to create a sense of anticipation and excitement. I think it does that beautifully. The question of the BBCs spending of UK taxpayers’ hard earned — I leave that one well alone. Great to have your say in the forum.