In a few words
Bunlimited is a new product concept in the ambient food category, and serving up a so-so website that felt like an afterthought simply wasn’t an option for its creators. They set Fablr to challenge of coming up with something fun, zaney, and unique, and we were all too happy to accept.
Key Challenges
Websites for FMCG products are often disappointing fare, leaving consumers who follow links from TV ads and in-store promotions underwhelmed.
Fablr was appointed by Struik Foods Europe in the Netherlands to take the deliciously anarchic brand developed by UK branding agency The Collaborators and develop it into an online experience that would be a true reflection of the world of Bunlimited – capturing its surreal sense of fun and vibrant energy.
The website would need to integrate with offline marketing activities such as trade shows, promotional tour events and social media engagement, as well as giving them the chance to add promotional material as their marketing campaign started to pick up speed.
The site would also need to be fully responsive, delivering high impact and the same rich graphical experience on mobile devices, as many users would visit the site on their mobile phones after being prompted by online and POS promotions.
Approach
It was clear from our initial conversations with Struik that the website couldn’t be just a product range inventory, so we approached the creative process with the objective of immersing users in the world of Bunlimited from the outset.
We felt that the dynamic hand drawn illustrative style would lend itself well to movement, and we looked to the old Terry Gilliam Monty Python cut-out style animations as a reference point for the slightly weird, off-the-wall, spontaneous style that would fit the Bunlimited brand.
Fun mealtimes for families and friends are at the heart of the Bunlimited brand promise – offering a social eating experience based on self-expression as you and your family create your ‘perfect’ hot dog.
As well as offering fun hot dog topping recipes, the site needed to be able to collect and curate photos of real people enjoying Bunlimited mealtime experiences taken from events, promotional tours and social media posts. We needed to have a designated ‘wall’ on the website where these could appear, but we also wanted to weave this valuable content into the immersive experience that we wanted people to have when they first arrived on the wearebunlimited.com website.
For the final icing on the cake we devised a fun bit of engagement and brand story-telling that could be enjoyed by anyone and everybody – an interactive game in the retro-arcade mould but re-imagined for the world of Bunlimited hotdogs.
Delivery
Once we had developed a strategy around the site’s content and how we would communicate the brand and its relevance to consumers, we then developed a series of visual storyboard drafts which allowed us to play around with roughly placed imagery, plan our animations, and experiment with copywriting ideas that could lead visitors around an interactive online experience.
The final Bunlimited website is a vibrant, visually immersive marketing asset. It takes a customer touchpoint that might start from a point-of-sale, packaging or advertising experience and then carries it seamlessly into an interactive digital space.
The homepage is the starting point for getting a real hit of the product’s brand story and animated fun. From here visitors can go off and play the game, take a look at the recipes collection or checkout the Bunlimited ‘user wall’.
Based on the Duck Hunt arcade classic with a spagetti-western twist, the web game (named ‘RootinTootinShootin’) was built using the Phaser JS library using WebGL. Combining this with TypeScript allowed us to build a strong and scalable framework for the game which made it simple to update and skin with new assets and animations.
"We teamed up with The Collaborators, commissioning a range of additional drawings to help turn static artwork into an eye-catching animated fountain of ketchup or a pirate swinging his sabre!"
Geoff Bretherick
- Fablr Creative Director
The ‘RootinTootinShootin’ website game was a huge hit with users with players fighting valiantly against the multiple waves of flying hotdogs. Struik took the game to conventions and other events in order to give buyers and peers a chance to pit their fast draw skills against each other and to provide a unique feel for the brand.
For the technical build we created a custom WordPress template. WordPress was selected as the client and their third-party vendors were familiar with the platform, and it would also give them future scalability and simplify on-going development.