MailChimp once did a huge vinyl Freddie giveaway. The plan was to have a new video for each new Freddie, revealed at the beginning of each giveaway. The first featured classic Freddie, which was a challenge. Weird is easy enough to do, but how do you bring new meaning to a mascot who’s been around for more than a decade?
Initially we had a very Dada-esque non-sequitur idea that slowly evolved into someone making prototypes of Freddie, which parallels the actual creation of the first vinyl Freddie. From there, we took a raw idea and tried to figure out where it might lead. A creative process video about the creative process, if you will.
We tried to take a wide-eyed, childlike approach while producing something that was modest in scope and budget. We put a lot of time into storyboarding the video, which kept our brains from melting on the actual shoot day. While figuring out the conceptual phase, Troy and I tried to stay focused on 2 main ideas:
“What’s the silliest thing we can come up with?” and “What would make us laugh and have a good time?”
So, what does it take to make a Freddie? Snacks and power tools, mostly.
Soon after, we decided to celebrate MailChimp’s new offices with new billboards. We pulled our favorite stills from the video to tell Freddie’s creation story all up and down our new block. We sure laughed. Hopefully our neighbors did, too.
Collaboration with Troy Stains.