The Need

Mickey Truck Bodies, a 100-year old leader in the truck body industry, wanted to find innovative ways to promote its new Mickey Engineered Vehicles Division (MENVD). The new MENVD division was created in 2010 with the purpose of providing innovative solutions in the areas of emergency-response, medical, communications, and specialized prototypes specialty vehicles. Mickey Engineered Vehicles has developed a unique process, known as the Service Delivery Model, for manufacturing world-class specialty vehicles. With this methodology, Mickey can help customers save up to 20% of the cost of a vehicle and eliminate the risk of delivering a specialty vehicle that does not meet their expectations.

However, walking customers through a manufacturing process can be boring and complex. Even more difficult would be to get them excited about the benefits of this approach. Mickey was in need of a web and TV commercial that would demonstrate the benefits of their Service Delivery Model in an entertaining and memorable fashion.

The Solution

Mickey Engineered Vehicles hired Identika to produce the commercial, which is part of a comprehensive branding and transmedia content strategy Identika is developing for Mickey. Our team used a creative process that comprised of the following elements:

• We sat down with Mickey executives and understood their requirements, business goals and customer’s needs. Their answers set the tone for the themes of the video.
• We sketched out potential designs using white-boarding techniques during the brainstorming process and jointly developed several candidate designs until we came up with the winning metaphor: The use of cartoon-like characters on a race track and memorable imagery of Mickey employees and the customer living through the Service Delivery Model process
• We storyboarded the video sequence to hit on the right messages in the minimum amount of time (see the storyboard samples below)
• With Mickey’s approval we created a digital animation of the video, bringing the cartoon characters to life
• We adjusted timing of sequences, added soundtrack, titles, and transitions to the video.
• After a round of revisions and adjustments, we created the final version of the video, integrated in the customer’s home page, on Facebook, and YouTube.

The Benefits

The commercial produced by Identika has been a success for Mickey Engineered Vehicles. The video’s original concept and effective use of an energetic soundtrack has proven successful among Mickey’s customers and it is demonstrating, in a memorable and entertaining way, how a company with a legacy of over 100 years is able to reinvent itself to the benefit of its customers. Mickey Engineered Vehicles was very pleased with this commercial and hired Identika to produce additional videos for web site and corporate consumption in their business meetings and presentations all over the country.