Tile, a bluetooth tracker, launched its first major ad campaign. By Deutsch and Mark Molloy, it’s a sad, sweet saga of a lost panda called Ernie. Via Adweek:
“When we lose something and then find it, it’s an indescribably good feeling,” Deutsch executive creative director Guto Araki tells AdFreak. “But how could we tell that story so that the lost thing is compelling to everyone? That was the challenge. So, we realized that by transforming something into someone, we could end up with a beautiful love story.”
As it turns out, the resulting tale took it cues from real life.
“The ‘Lost Panda’ story was inspired by an actual Tile customer, a young girl who lost her stuffed animal in a busy city, only to be reunited later with the help of the Tile community,” says Tile CMO Simon Fleming-Wood. “Our creative team thought it’d be powerful to tell the story from the perspective of Ernie, a stuffed panda, and to bring to life what his owner, Lucy, might have imagined her ‘best friend’ going through in trying to find his way back to her. In her imagination, Ernie gets more and more lost while looking for her, only to be helped home by the ‘good neighbors’ he meets—a metaphor for the Tile community. Of course, in reality, Ernie stays in the exact place he was likely dropped by Lucy, only to be found by a loving father who had the foresight to put a Tile in Ernie’s pocket.”