Zotos Professional’s brands specialize in affordable, salon-worthy, at home styling and hair care solutions. In an effort to increase general brand awareness for a previously niche company, the SocialQ team and I created this ad to run on an OTT and YouTube first campaign. The Zotos team wanted the ad to highlight how working women, moms, (etc.) often don’t have enough time to fit in major salon treatments amongst their hectic schedules. Also, they wanted a bit of humor in the ad.
Upon realizing that there was not going to be enough budget for our original vision–involving live action production and VFX shots–we had to quickly pivot. I proposed a “POV Computer-Screen-mockup” direction as a solution we could achieve in-house, while still getting the core message and “overwhelmed” feeling across. This felt especially appropriate for YouTube (non-Shorts) placement, since many people would be viewing on their computer. The script needed some rewriting so it could lend itself to a more interesting animated piece, and then I began designing.
The brand had little previous illustration style established, and I felt that the colorful, sassy Zotos Professional branding would be well complimented by a retro, 2000’s UI style (also admittedly trendy at the time). To incorporate the clients’ ask for some “of-the-moment” humor, I added the grating, TikTok style text-to-speech section, while relating it to the topic at hand and their best selling product line (root coloring).
The ad ran a successful awareness campaign that achieved all KPI goals and increased traffic to the brand’s website. The project was an exercise in nimble, creative problem solving – a testament to the fact that marketing and content goals can be achieved through notably different approaches (especially when faced with challenges like budget and time constraints). Moreover, sometimes the unique, final product might delight you more than the original idea!
Agency SocialQ | Producer Austin Addison | Strategy Lead Thomas Soares | Creative Director Mathew Martini | Design Mathew Martini, Sweta Patel | Animation Mathew Martini | Sound Design Mathew Martini
