Funworks Inspires Healthy Lifestyle With Animations for Raley's Markets

Funworks developed a campaign to support the customer-facing education of Raley’s Shelf Guide, including 23 special icons. Working with animation studio Lobster, Funworks brought the guide to life with unique illustrations meant to educate people on the specific diets or lifestyles referenced by each icon. From a “Keto Friendly” icon featuring sunglasses-wearing bacon and butter lounging in a frying pan to a strongman pumping iron for a “High In Protein” icon, each image beams with warmth and colour.

Several of the new illustrated icons were also turned into a 30-second video and eight 15-second clips — shorts created to educate shoppers on the breadth of nutritional lifestyles and definitions of each icon in a fun digestible way. In one playful video, a tomato basketball player jumps and slaps a sugar cube from dropping into a jar of tomato sauce. In another scenario, this time set on a dating show, a head of cauliflower is chosen by a bachelor over an alluring doughnut and a bottle of beer. Each short provides the perfect complement to Raley’s desire to help customers make more informed food choices, extending its education of the expanded program and reach online and via social media. Raley's also took the illustrations and produced in-store collateral for all of their locations across Northern California and Nevada.

For Funworks, the biggest challenge was in producing visuals that would really make customers take notice of Raley’s countless healthy options. “With so many icons, we realised that we needed to create something that would demand attention and draw people to the Shelf Guide,” explains Funworks CCO Craig Mangan. “It also had to be easily understandable and kind of fun. That’s when we decided to come up with real personalities for the products themselves — turning the icons into characters and bringing them to life in an entertaining way.”

“Raley’s relaunched our Shelf Guide, a one-of-a-kind label transparency tool for our customers to navigate food labels. We needed a strong marketing campaign to share this enhanced, valuable resource with our customers,” said Erin Estelle, Raley’s director of advertising & creative. “We are excited about the creative and innovative campaign developed in partnership with Funworks. The assets bring an engaging and creative way to share the tool with our customers.”

Like many of Funworks projects, Raley’s Shelf Guide marketing campaign was conceptualised in a Funworkshop, the agency’s improv-inspired process that champions open conversation and collaboration toward quickly generating engaging concepts, strategies and content. By bringing together Raley’s leadership, including sales and marketing, as well as creative consumers the team was able to find a balance between communicating the important message of the campaign and inviting customers to share in the fun.

While recently launched, the effort has already been embraced by the local communities. Mangan continues, “It really goes to show you that, with the right message, you can really inspire anyone to be conscious and enthusiastic about their own health. It also demonstrates how far you can go when a brand like Raley’s takes steps to show that it really cares about its customers.”