For this project, Scoop Away – the makers of clumping cat litter – asked us and our partners to launch a fun microsite with an interactive video component. Clients love when consumers interact with their brands on websites. However, if they are done poorly, the interactive components can actually get in the way of the user’s experience. With Scoop Away, we leveraged one of our insights about onlin consumer behaviour: to be successful, interactive sites need to allow for significant personalization.
Our big idea was to create the Adventures of Clumpy and Crumbly, two cute and fun cartoon characters. Clumpy, because he’s made of Scoop Away cat litter, is the hero. Unlike Crumbly – who is made from a competitor’s cat litter – he sticks together and doesn’t fall apart. To animate their adventures, we created a series of fun, customizable movies where Clumpy and Crumbly can experience various pitfalls before Crumbly falls apart.
We managed every aspect of the movies. We designed and custom-built the animations and recorded the attendant audio. The animations were complex. The customizable elements allowed users to choose between several cartoony dangers our characters could face (bandsaw or stamper?) and the opportunity to write dialogue for the characters. Once completed, the movies were shared on Facebook or emailed to friends. The users could even upload a picture of a cat (or cats – we don’t judge!) which would be featured in the movie.
With these personalized elements driving interest, the results have been the sort we could only hope for. Months after the launch, viewers were still sending thousands of videos to their friends. To handle all of the traffic, we worked with our partners to add more server space. And that, my friends, is a lot of clumping cat litter.
