The challenge: GEN Z was centered around a joke [a sustainable water brand named after Gen Z that visually features a cast of critter characters] that is in need of a new, killer punchline. Our solution: We came up with 6 fantastical, creative frameworks that would connect all of these important dots and end up with a brand that makes a big splash…while also making sense. (Yes, one of which turned GEN Z into a playful acronym, and one cast the characters as superheroes from the future sent to save the earth via aluminum water bottles.) Ultimately we landed on a framework and accompanying brand voice that lampooned the fraught, melodramatic, pandering approach of most cause-related marketing campaigns. We called it “Make the World a Wetter Place.” With this brand throughline, we do it all: 1) Address their target audience’s hyper awareness to being ‘sold to’, 2) Illuminate the central offering (an ‘anti-plastic’ sustainable water bottle solution), 3) Weave in their visual characters into this narrative (see mythology below) and 4) Make sense of the GEN Z brand name by playfully casting the brand’s namesake (Gen Z) as the earth’s last hope. Drink up, it only gets more weird and wonderful from here.

With our new creative framework settled, we leaned hard on our parody and satire chops and created a broad suite of slogans that bring those big ideas to life—and solidified the new tone of voice and branded humor devices. We identified 3 distinct categories that this language fell into: Absurdisms (concepts that rely on offbeat spelling, rhyming, or wordplay) Platitudes and Bottle Cries (Turning cause-related idioms or well-known mottos on their head with a hyperbolic spin, wordplay, or other surprises) and Product 411 (Phrases that playfully describe what the product is, how to use it, or who it’s for). This system helped the GEN Z team familiarize themselves with the new brand and equipped them to incorporate this language into future brand assets.

GEN Z had designed a dynamic visual universe featuring a variety of delightfully-offbeat critters, but they had no way to connect it to their brand story and leverage it as part of their communication strategy. So we jumped at the chance to create a ‘mascot mythology’ of sorts that would transform these critters from disjointed, nonsensical design elements into Magical, Meaningful, Comical, and Deployable mouthpieces for the brand. Tonally, we designed this fantastical universe and its characters to adopt the hyperbolic voice of being obsessed with saving the planet (I.e. Platitudes against plastic). In this way we weave in the new brand approach of using decidedly lighthearted language to promote cause-related initiatives instead of the historically heavy-handed one. Structurally, we created a relatable backstory that cast the Critters as ‘the team behind the dream’—aka real, remote employees of GEN Z.  Their mythology included humorous folklore about how they came to be, their magical location, how they interact with humans, and why they love aluminum so much. And then for the core 7 critters, we fleshed out their biographies so that they become multi-dimensional, consumer-facing storytellers of the brand, added value to the Gen Z Water message, and enhanced the user experience. If you’re wondering, yes the result is something so fun that the entire Ronald McDonald squad is jealous.

To help GEN Z make a splash in their experiential events (outside of Target stores, and at expos across the country), we created a ‘stunt’ campaign for them called, “Put a Better Spin on the Future.” It was an interactive, Wheel of Fortune-esque game that invites participants to spin a wheel full of funny, GEN Z-branded sustainability pledges and then put on a temporary tattoo of whichever one it lands on. A key campaign signage on the game says, “If you use plastic, the joke is on you,” thus allowing the participants to literally have the joke on them when they place the temporary tattoos on their body.

By playing the game, participants join GEN Z’s ‘call to arms’ (again, literally) to ditch plastic water bottles and use aluminum water bottles instead. A nice element of this part of the stunt is that participants will use water from refillable GEN Z bottles for the application. Additionally, since the temporary tattoos consist of GEN Z-branded sustainability pledges it allowed the participants to be walking promoters of the GEN Z ethos. Furthermore, since the temporary tattoo messaging was humorous and bold, it encouraged them to share their experience (and tats) on social media.