Amazon turned to director Peter Sluszka for the fourth straight year to kick off Amazon Prime Day–actually two days earlier this week, July 15 and 16. A mixed media maven, Sluszka specializes in stop motion, set design and fabrication. He brought all that expertise and more to bear on a campaign which included this energetic spot.
This year’s partnership was particularly exciting for Hornet, because Amazon worked directly with Sluszka from the get-go, not just on execution. After mutually exploring more than 30 potential concepts, they eventually landed upon an idea centered around a “Two-Day Parade of Epic Deals”.
The parade that Sluszka and his team ultimately created is a fun, public procession of Amazon’s product diversity laid out in colorful stop-motion. The scenes feature confetti-strewn streets filled with hundreds of originally designed characters buzzing about in an exposition of all that’s on offer in the Prime Day marketplace—from home goods to electronics to outdoor fun to even Nicolas Cage Mermaid Pillows (yep, those are a real thing sold on Amazon).
Like previous campaigns, the world created is a textured universe made of paper and cardboard. Cardboard was the original material of choice because it played off of Amazon’s shipping boxes. In the animations, when one of these boxes opens up…an entire world comes spilling out. Everything is paper: the characters are cardboard, the floats and buildings are spruced up with sheets of colored paper, even the “water” very liquidly splashing out of a pool is paper. At times these creations are so intricately designed and detailed they look almost CG. But, bar one tiny asset at the beginning of the commercial, they’re entirely handcrafted. As Sluszka said, “Aesthetically, paper craft speaks directly to Amazon’s cardboard box. You get an undeniable tangibility and charm by doing it with actual paper.”
