The Heart of Fun:
A Blue Bunny Brand Act
2021
Conceptualization, social and print art direction, landing page design
The Challenge:
Blue Bunny ice cream asked for a Brand Act that would garner a billion impressions, with no major media buy and a modest budget.
The Opportunity:
My partner and I saw an additional opportunity: we were coming out of Covid restrictions, and a lot of towns and small businesses had been substantially harmed over the last 1.5 years. Let’s make an impression (or a billion) while doing a little good.
Our Answer:
Let’s help local ice cream parlors that had to close due to Covid get back on their feet, giving back fun and community to their neighborhoods and towns in the process. And with some help from a fellow designer and ice-cream lover, Nate Berkus, we did just that.
The Idea: The Heart of Fun
Ice cream parlors are the heart of fun in many towns, and because of Covid, some communities lost their only one. We created The Heart of Fun to help towns across America get back their ice cream parlors and their sense of community.
We conducted a nation-wide search to support community ice cream parlors across the country that had closed due to Covid. Then, we teamed up with designer Nate Berkus to give a grand prize winner a grant, a design refresh, and grand re-opening party.
The grand prize was a design refresh with celebrity designer (and ice cream lover!) Nate Berkus, grant money, and a grand opening party. Additionally, runner-up parlors all over the country got thousands of dollars to give away free scoops to their communities on National Ice Cream Day.
The Launch
On launch day, we took over a studio in NYC on launch day for 3 hours to patch Nate into interviews to discuss his love of ice cream and why parlors should apply for The Heart of Fun.
In total, Nate did interviews with 10 media outlets spanning news stations in key media markets and nationally syndicated shows.
Next, we pitched an image of Nate with the Load’d Bar to top entertainment publications for brand awareness beyond the campaign, securing placements in outlets like Us Weekly, life & style and ok! Magazine.
Project logo design
Launch webdesign https://www.bluebunny.com/heartoffun
Engagement + National Ice Cream Day
A billion impressions and counting, y’all. A billion.
After reviewing entries and getting all winners validated, we awarded (1) Grand Prize, (3) Second Tier prizes and (15) Third Tier prizes.
All winners were made public on National Ice Cream Day, and we continued celebrating throughout the next week with Blue Bunny Picking up Tabs at parlors across the country. National and local media talked about how Blue Bunny was celebrating small parlors.
Next, we celebrated National Ice Cream Day by doing something no ice cream brand has done before, picking up the tab at Ice Cream Parlors around the country – and in turn, driving traffic to these struggling parlors – throughout the week of National Ice Cream Day.
This unique angle led to coverage in the major national outlets covering the holiday as well as local coverage in the markets with winners.
With a tiny, social-only ad buy, we had to make super engaging content to be posted by the brand and Nate Berkus to get a maximum number of shares and impressions. We let users vote on design selections and their Blue Bunny favorites, as well as posting teaser content and calls-to-enter. And of course, we asked Nate to speak directly to his many fans.
The Winner
Redesigning and it feels so good.
While the rest of the parlors were celebrating National Ice Cream Day, we were gearing up for our Grand Prize parlor reveal on July 31 in Goldsboro, NC.
We were able to refresh The Ice Storm in our Blue Bunny way, but still highlight the parlor’s unique story and why they are the Heart of Fun in their community. We then celebrated the grand re-opening with a block party.
At the block party, we had approximately 875 attendees over the course of 6 hours and gave out 672 scoops of Blue Bunny and 423 Load’d Products.
