R/GA Shanghai brings in kickass cat to fight for scrappy craft beer brand

In China, craft beer sales command only 1% of the market compared to roughly 14% globally. Market surveys showed younger beer drinkers equated craft beer as "expensive" with a "heavy taste."  Battling those barriers, then, smaller craft brands have to scratch and claw their way to getting noticed.

How better to win that street fight then with a fearless feline superhero in your corner.

Enter Louie, the kickass cat. 

Boxing Cat, one of China’s first microbrewery brands, tag-teamed with R/GA Shanghai to transform its look and feel through an integrated campaign and redesign. In a series of animated films, Louie looms large, battling banal beer to deliver flavour with a punch. These 'First Blood' films are now being rolled out across China, R/GA said in a release, including at live superhero-themed launch parties in Shanghai and Beijing.  They'll also appear on Boxing Cat’s official WeChat account.

“Louie is the embodiment of the brand. He’s there to challenge the ordinary, so we see him patrolling the streets, ridding them of mundane beer, one haymaker at a time,” said AB InBev Head of Craft & Specialities APAC, Nicolas Eduardo Morelli. “It’s beautiful. The storytelling is impactful and we’re incredibly happy with the result.”

R/GA's new 'masterbrand' for Boxing Cat includes a new tagline of “Live With A Punch” and with clean but high-impact redesigns of packaging, point-of-sale and promo materials.  Another slogan, “Defeat Ordinary,” was added to reinforce the film work. 

“We saw an enormous opportunity for Boxing Cat to be the contender that challenged those expectations, by leveraging their heritage as a local upstart and creating a distinct personality for the brand - a crazy, kickass one that is the antithesis of ordinary,” said R/GA Shanghai ECD, Terence Leong.

Shanghai-based production company, Final Frontier, produced the piece, directed and animated by Buenos Aires studio Le Cube. 

As a fellow furry four-legged creature, Ad Nut can only admire (and fear) the work that has brough Louie to life. This is all about a fight for recognition and the top-notch high-impact animated branding does that in spades.

In fact, this campaign is making Ad Nut's cute and cuddly animated persona feel a little inadequate. Perhaps it's time for a more badass version of this squirrel, one that is more eager to fight back the next time any bear decides to raid Ad Nut's stash of nuts, one that comes out when the real click-baity, self-aggrandising proof-of-concept garbage ad work really burns Ad Nut's britches. 

Phew, feels good to let off some steam!  Time for a beer...

CREDITS

Creative Agency: R/GA SHANGHAI
Executive Creative Director: Terence Leong

Creative Director: Shing Sian Chew
Associate Creative Director: Rich Harris
Copywriter: Fang Cao
Designer: Jeremy Wang
Content Producer: Ivy Low
Producer: Ann Yao
Strategy Director: Connie Ho
Planner: Alan Wu
Account Director: Angela Tan
Managing Director: Sook Ping Chow
Production Company: FINAL FRONTIER
Executive Producer: Chris Colman, Gustavo Karam, Julieta Zajaczkowski
Director: LE CUBE
Animation Studio: LE CUBE
Director: Ralph Karam
Executive producer: Juan Manuel Freire, Fernanda Soma
Music & Sound Production: Kersound Studios
Composer: Akira Terao
Singer: Yang Kai 杨锴
Music Supervisor: Greg Yu
Music & Sound Design: KerSound
Composer: Akira Terao

Ad Nut is a surprisingly literate woodland creature that for unknown reasons has an unhealthy obsession with advertising and now suddenly wants to be a badass to boot. Ad Nut gathers ads from all over Asia and the world for your viewing pleasure, because Ad Nut loves you. You can also check out Ad Nut's Advertising Hall of Fame, or read about Ad Nut's strange obsession with 'murderous beasts'.