Zain

Nicework was enlisted to script and produce a series of animated shorts for mobile telecommunications company Zain. The campaign, which was aired on premier music channel MTV, aimed to create brand awareness amongst a younger demographic. Using a variety of musical references and bespoke audio-visual elements, Nicework was able to design and produce a cool series of animated shorts to speak to a young target market.

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Client: Zain

Established in Kuwait in 1983, Zain is a pioneer of mobile technologies in the Middle East. The company has an active network of over 37 million private and business users.

Services:

Script writing, Animation, Design, Production.

Discovery:

Nicework has produced several entertaining inserts and sequences for youth-orientated entertainment channels such Channel O and MTV. Zain wanted to leverage the popular appeal of MTV to engage a young audience. Nicework's track record of creating cool work for cool young folks made us a perfect fit for the project.

Brief:

• Produce 10 shorts to promote Zain's affiliation with MTV
• Create favourable brand associations with the hip MTV crowd
• Communicate Zain's offering to the MTV audience
• Grow Zain's customer base in line with an aggressive growth strategy

Challenges:

Every execution had to incorporate the Zain logo and tagline at the end of the short. Creating a coherent stylistic treatment initially caused quite a few head scratches at the Nicework offices, but it was ultimately pulled off with aplomb.

Tackling the brief:

Aflame with inspiration we set off to produce: The Most Magical, Colourful and Musical Shorts in the World, Ever. References to music culture formed the core of the creative treatments. The shorts featured headphones, studio speakers, microphones and instrument cables in a kaleidoscope of colours. The Zain logo was conspicuously placed in each segment to increase positive brand awareness and a unique "feel the beat" font was designed in-house and employed throughout.

The standard multimedia toolkit of Maya and After Effects was used to create the animated 2D and 3D elements for the execution, with compositing in After Effects. Our very own managing director Ben Vorster unleashed his musical prowess to produce an awesome soundtrack for each of the shorts. Not to be outdone by his musical counterpart, our creative director, Ross Drakes, slept very little for a few days to produce a series of executions that he still brags about at the staff party punch table. All in all, a job well done.

Result:

• A happy client
• Vivid, colourful shorts that make Zain look really cool
• Slick execution of the project that makes Nicework look really cool
• Increased brand awareness amongst youth markets

Credits:

Designer/Illustrator: Donovan Pugh
Animators: Ross Drakes, Justin Wingate and Hendrik Kok
Music: Ben Vorster