In the early 80s, a young Ogilvy & Mather art director, John Curran, was feeling a long way from home. He’d been in Australia for many months, but his girlfriend had just arrived with a lot of his memories in her suitcase.
He thought, “What if I could recreate the ice cream I grew up with in Utica, New York.” So he started drawing.
He drew for months. He drew the logo, packaging, the launch ad storyboard and so much collateral. He chose the taste, feel and flavour variants. He got O&M excited about his project. And O&M got its client excited. That client was Streets. He believed that the ice cream should be a stand alone brand. He got what was by now a large team of players to agree. This was the result:
Homer Hudson launched. And took off – to use a cliché, “like a rocket”.
What happened to Homer Hudson? Well, Streets let it go. And now a new group of owners has relaunched it. Justin Drape, Mark Green, Scott Nowell, Fabio Buresti and David Park from advertising agency, The Monkeys and design studio partner, Maud, have reinvented Homer Hudson for 2015.
with the same love, creative verve and attention to detail that birthed the brand thirty years ago.
Why? “We wanted to celebrate excessive popular culture, the ice cream dream. We wanted Homer Hudson to be a celebration of fun, all out, OTT and anti-sanitised. There’s so much ‘wholesomeness’ out there in the category. This is break-up ice cream, promotion ice cream, wow what a day ice cream, me and my bestie ice cream…everything about the new Homer Hudson, from flavours to (imminent) interactive packaging, stemmed from that.
The new Homer Hudson’s cardboard container is faithful to the original, except for size. The packaging is now made in China and the new 473ml tub is a two-serve size, or one if you really love Homer Hudson. Its design is vibrantly new, quirky and unlike anything seen retail freezers. The ice cream is made under contract by Bulla.
The limited edition art on every tub was conceived by British artist, Serge Seidlitz, who brought each flavour name to life with a colourful pop culture diorama. He is currently working on the first post launch flavour, Super Bowl.
It’s Homer Hudson with the lot – chocolate and vanilla ice creams, Rocky Road, gummies…”It tastes amazing,” Drape promises.
“We also want every tub to tell a story that people enjoy as much as the ice cream,” Drape continued, “and we are currently developing a platform that will allow consumers to interact with the characters on each tub and have the characters interact with each other, to build an ongoing story.”
Image recognition technology will recognise and activate the characters, and their stories will become animated behind-the-product series viewed when users click on each of the on-pack images.
Aside from the artwork, everything else for Homer Hudson was created in-house at The Monkeys and Maud – including design, illustration, packaging, consumer website, B2B trade website and distribution and e-commerce systems, posters, POS and (ongoing) NPD.
With The Monkeys expanding into FMCG product development and ownership, the agency has essentially become its own client.
“We thought about appointing a procurement company to put the Homer Hudson account out to pitch but then we had a chemistry session with our own agency and everything just clicked. It has given us a deeper understanding of what our clients go through. Because most weeks we’re now dealing with dessert chefs, licensees, suppliers and retailers. There’s a lot to learn, but there’s also a lot of opportunity to introduce fresh thinking into a traditional process, and a traditionally lacklustre category, ” Justin Drape, chief creative officer The Monkeys, explained.
"This move is designed to open up new revenue and commercial opportunities for The Monkeys and Maud. If we can pull this off we can partner other clients in new ventures and actually contribute with skin in the game. We might be wrong but while the industry cries about falling margins little is being done to move upstream and offer clients something different," Mark Green, The Monkeys chief executive officer, added.
