“Did You Mean…?” Is MailChimp's Latest Campaign From Riff Raff Films & Droga5

Starting with its name, MailChimp has been a beacon for not blending in. Although people have infamously mispronounced or mistaken their name, MailChimp is not so concerned with what people call them. They’d much rather show you who they are. Because they believe the best way to build relationships with customers, fans or anyone else is to be yourself. For them, that means having some fun with their name.

So we’re taking the MailChimp name and riffing on it, being playful with all the different ways people might say “MailChimp.”

MailChimp’s latest campaign, “Did You Mean…?” is about creating extreme cases of individuality and showing what breaks through. With Droga5 at the creative helm, MailChimp is kicking off the campaign with three cinematic short films: MaleShrimp, JailBlimp and KaleLimp. The films have hit the silver screen in select theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta, among other cities. Films will go be online starting January 23 and on television starting February 20.

MailShrimp

One shrimp’s dream is another man’s sandwich. That’s the tagline for MailShrimp, a new short film produced by Riff Raff Films and directed by English duo The Sacred Egg. But as with all the duo’s films, there’s obviously much more to it than that. With a heartwarming musical number at its center, this intimate love letter to aspiration, which takes place in one small area of a humble mailroom, will keep viewers guessing until the very last frame.

JailBlimp

What happens when children at a birthday party become accomplices in one of the most unusual getaways of all time? Enter JailBlimp. In select cinemas, this film, produced by Riff Raff Films, who have worked with The Sacred Egg on many of their previous films (most notably KaleLimp and MailShrimp), is part everyday, part dream world that bucks convention. It’s a play on scale and reality that viewers won’t want to miss

KaleLimp

KaleLimp is an intimate portrait of an ordinary anniversary dinner that takes an extraordinary turn. While the short film exists on many levels—as an origin story, an argument for trying new things or even a commentary on modern dining—it is, at its heart, a love story. With dogs made of kale.

On the making of the Short Films.

Words by Directors Duo, The Sacred Egg - "Each film posed different challenges for us to noodle around. For KaleLimp we had to work out the best way to create a dog made of salad. Each dog in the spot has been made slightly differently. The hero dog was built from from a mixture of practical kale (we spent some time doing research in the extensive kale section of Whole Foods), three different kale suits for different types of shot (walking, swimming and close ups) and then a 3D CGI dog head and paws. This was a very technical build that modeled a dog’s skeleton, how his skin moved over his skeleton and then used fractal patterns to mimic the shape and movement of kale on top of the skin. So every layer moves separately as the dog shakes. 

For MailShrimp we wanted to keep the design of the singing prawn as simple as possible. No features apart from a mouth. This was so that it felt helpless as it lay there on his side, stuck in the mayonnaise of his life. But we wanted it still to have its own unique personality and not just be a generic mouth. We ended up referencing blind worms and goldfish for the shape and mood of the down turned mouth. We then introduced an uvula (the dangly bit at the back of your throat) and made the lips annunciate the vowels and consonants in a slightly more human rather than fishlike way (they tend have hinge jaws). So he’s a weird blind prawn, but you kind of like him.

JailBlimp involved a number of technical shots which involved matching camera moves that are on the scale of the children’s party with camera moves on the scale of the prisoners. It worked on a 1:18 ratio in terms of the distance and speed at which the camera dollied. It also involved about eighteen kids under ten who, despite discovering they could take whatever they liked from the food and drink (and sweets) table, remained true pros until the end."