How Kansas City's Liquid 9 Bumped Off ADDY Awards Promos

When the Kansas City Ad Club decided to change the name of its award show from the OMNI Awards to the ADDY Awards, it needed to find an easy way to make sure everyone in the local advertising community was aware of the brand switch. Kansas City ad agency Barkley turned to local post boutique Liquid 9 for a viral campaign of three animated Internet spots that would show the OMNI getting assassinated by the ADDY in a tongue-in-cheek style riffing on spy flicks. We talked to motion-graphics designer Cody Smith about using 3D tools to get a lo-fi 2D look.

F&V: How did the look develop between you and the client?

CODY SMITH: When they first came to me, I was thinking full-blown 3D, like the Spy vs. Spy Mountain Dew commercials. But they said, “We want this to look lo-fi. Hand-drawn.” It had to be good animation, but lo fi. They had done some rough sketches, but I drew the characters in [Adobe] Illustrator. I took that style and created everything else. I created the helicopters and machines in Maxon Cinema 4D, and exported them with Maxon’s Sketch and Toon to create line-drawing looks – flat with no shadows.

Was this specifically conceived as a viral campaign?

That’s how we wanted it to be – just short little virals. They wanted to do it fun and quirky and get the point across really quick.

Was it tough to get the look and feel just right?

At times I wouldn’t put in enough violence. They’d say, “Boost it up!” They wanted to go for, almost, shock value. It’s that kind of humor – you keep killing them over and over until it’s almost laughable.

Is it hard to do funny?

It is. Other times it doesn’t seem that way. I’ll just be rolling with it. Sometimes, in my head, I’ll find something funny and I’ll execute that and get someone else to look at it. If they laugh, you run with what they’ve laughed at. It can be hard and it can easy.

Who was the intended audience, and how was it distributed?

It was meant to reach everybody in the advertising community in Kansas City. The Kansas City Ad Club sent out a newsletter with a link to the main website.

Are virals becoming a bigger part of your job?

I do a lot of commercials. Since a lot of advertising is moving to the web, that’s becoming more of my job description now: videos for websites. I think it’s so easy to do a viral video and get it out there. It’s free – you just upload it, and you get a lot more people to see it.

Whose idea was the secret-agent theme done on a kazoo?

That was Barkley’s, actually. When our sound designer [Patrick Meagher] started, they hadn’t given us any direction on music. Since it was a lo-fi look and feel, he thought about doing this overdramatic blockbuster music to offset it. We went through three or four versions of that before it came down to asking him to play the kazoo and do this kazoo ending. I think his dog ate his kazoo, so he had to make one from scratch.

Watch the rest of the videos online in “swanky pseudo HD” format at the Kansas City Ad Club website.