By Ken Liebeskind
NASHVILLE, TN --An animated video from O’Charley’s restaurants that celebrates the soft rolls that are customer favorites is featured in the chain’s new advertising campaign, which broke on TV Jan. 21 and online Jan. 28.
The animated video began as a book created by The Buntin Group/Nashville and was transformed into a video that plays at www.therolls.com. Studio 11 Productions/Nashville produced the video.
The TV campaign features three :30s that focus on the rolls, including one in which a woman’s dress gets tangled in an escalator before a basket of rolls appears to save the day. “The rolls come in from off camera and change the situation from bad to good or good to great,” said Matt Horton, executive creative director at The Buntin Group.
The TV campaign is extended with the website that features a game that challenges visitors to slice a roll, and the animated fable. “We wrote a storybook first that features the roll that tries harder than any other roll,” he said. “We took it to the web and put the book online.”
The two-minute-and-thirty-second animation includes text from the book and images of the smiling roll, which appears on a baking sheet before bouncing around the screen amidst images of O’Charley’s servers and a happy family.
The video never mentions O’Charley’s, which Horton said was done to “keep it intriguing. It sucks in viewers more. It’s all about the user experience. The minute you hold up your banner, you lose people.” He said the O’Charley’s name is featured on other areas of the site.
Miki Lekic, who owns Studio 11 Productions, said the animated video was created in Flash, based on illustrations by Devan Todd, the designer at The Buntin Group.
The video will also run at YouTube. The TV spots feature the web address to drive viewers to the animated video.
O’Charley’s is a chain of 237 restaurants in the Southeast and Midwest.
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