XANTHAN
CARMICHAEL LYNCH, Minneapolis / ARLA / 2017
Overview
Credits
Overview
BriefExplanation
This film is part of a project with real kids. It opens with our question to each of the kids “Arla Cream Cheese Asked Kids: What is Xanthan?” We begin to hear the kid’s narration, as he beings to imagine that Xanthan is a space alien. We then enter the animated world of Xanthan, a space alien who likes to conquer planets. We follow his journey and then leave the animated world for the real world. We see the kid continuing the narration and see that he is drawing his version of Xanthan. His mother brings him breakfast complete with Arla. A voiceover tells us that Xanthan Gum isn’t actually a space alien, but rather a weird additive found in some cream cheese, but not in Arla Cream Cheese.
ClientBriefOrObjective
The kid’s story of Xanthan, the space alien who loves to conquer planets lent itself to stop motion animation. Since the kid was our director and we followed his drawing, we wanted to be true to every detail he included. Since he isn’t an artist, his drawings had very unique aspects – imperfect shapes, objects that don’t exist and logic that wasn’t really logical. But that’s what made it so fun. We fabricated each detail “perfectly” to his specifications. A three-day stop motion shoot with three sets shooting simultaneously gave us all the elements needed to bring the story to life with charm and character. Our kid director even helped animate a few shots.
EntrySummary
Arla only uses real, honest ingredients; ingredients that a kid could recognize. Our target audience in the United States is moms who want to buy the best for their kids. Most people believe cheese is a relatively healthy product. But some companies use unnecessary additives and preservatives to make their cheese; most people don’t even know what they are.
Moms buy cheese for their kids. So we decided to ask kids what they thought these weird additives might be. By going to the people who are most likely to be eating the cheese, we highlighted to mothers that some companies are sneaking these things into cheese, but Arla never has and never would do that.
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