Feel Good Research

I started off my research by looking at past YCN student competition entries for this brief and other animated adverts for Feel Good Drinks so as to better understand the type of style and humour they enjoy and find appropriate for promoting their product. The first I looked at was the winner of last year's competition, Debbie Hulme, who created a stop motion animation featuring gnomes. Her original animation was very rough and simple, yet the people at Feel Good Drink loved the gnomes quirky charm so much that they hired professional animators to adapt the idea into a full, more polished advert. While the gnome concept isn't particularly laugh-out-loud funny, its certainly very endearing since they make unusual mascots for a healthy drink. I suppose this proves that an idea needn't be complex to bring a smile to your face. Below is the final TV Advertisement, followed by the shorter, original piece by Debbie.





Next I looked at the TV adverts used prior to the birth of the gnomes, which involved the Feel Good Drinks bottle bouncing around and dodging the artificial ingredients/sugar. They're very short, cute, and to the point; getting the message across immediately while being just unusual enough to bring a smile to your face in the process.



In terms of animation the next advert isn't especially impressive, but its a fun little idea showing sugar to be the enemy trying to infiltrate the Feel Good bottle, only to be foiled in the last minute. Personifying the sugar and fruit like this is a nice trick often used in animation, so its good to see that the Feel Good team respond favourably to quirky gimmicks like this.



The final two adverts are just sheer, silly, good natured fun. They tell little to nothing of the drinks' ingredients or the benefits of choosing Feel Good drinks over other brands, instead choosing to focus purely on the idea of 'Spreading the Feelgoodness'. I think the first one works surprisingly well for an X Factor parody, and it certainly made me laugh when I first watched it. If a bottle of juice with a wig can make you laugh, then its obviously done its job by making you feel good. What more do you need to know?





Below are the advertisements for some of the competing brands of healthy drinks, though none share the Feel Good quirkiness that gives the Feel Good Drinks their charm. The Firefly Tonics are portrayed in a much more elegant, sophisticated way, perhaps suggesting a wealthier target audience.



The adverts for Vitamin Water revolve around sportsmen drinking the water and things happening out of the ordinary, with a commentator describing the events as though it's being broadcasted on TV. To be honest I find this way of advertising rather dull and difficult to follow, and it took a few watches for me to get the point they were trying to get across since (to me) its not very clear.



The final advert is one for Volvic Mineral Water, which I've included because it has such a delightfully funny twist. The way it blatantly makes fun of the priorities of a man's mind and mocks the invention of something as revolutionary as the wheel is very cheeky and brings a smile every time I watch it, which is what the Feel Good brief wants to achieve. I think I'd also like my advert to mock something that initially seems serious or dramatic, and the cave men time period has made me think of how similar the Feel Good logo character looks to the stick men in cave drawings... Perhaps I can find a way to develop or incorporate this style into my work.