Never underestimate the positive effect of saying “thank you” or “congratulations. You should also not overlook the efforts behind this overture; a fact to which executive producer Nikolay Gavrilov of ZheeShee Production can earnestly attest.
The same company behind such award-winning productions as “Decrease the distance” (Medmenfest Festival), “I will not give up. Life fund” (2nd palce at Youtube Film Hack), and a host of recognitions for their live mapping productions (the “Art Vision Modern” award at the Circle of Light Festival -2014, 1st Place at Berlin’s Festival of Lights – 2017), has created a service that allows users to entertain and communicate well wishes with a personal touch.
On a curt timeframe of three weeks, they came up with and launched a service to achieve this for a multi-million dollar audience in Russia. The ability of the mail.ru service to be personalized was key to its ubiquitous implementation by the public. ZheeShee also provided a youth targeted congrats service for younger audiences from Santa (or Ded Moroz as he’s known there) which was immensely popular, with an estimated nine million users. From concept to implementation was an astounding three weeks span, a fact made even more impressive when having viewed the excellent quality of these videos.
The entertaining and whimsical video cultivates some leniency for the sender who can provide thoughtfulness just by inserting the receiver’s name. The video takes place in a world of funny people and creatures where the hero has entered a flower shop. When the postman accidentally breaks the vase of flowers, the hero needs to get out of this problematic situation.
The mail.ru logo is visible and corporate colors of the service are seen throughout the video to subtly communicate who is providing the service.
There are two key characters featured in the video: the first is a charming merry postman who is in a hurry to deliver a bouquet, the second is a stern and impenetrable flower seller. The main characters are empathetically imbued with a sense of urgency and anxiety which serves as a proxy for the sender of this video, a subtle and highly effective means of transference.
Nikolay, though quite proud of what his team achieved, confesses that the short production schedule left no room for mistakes or second guessing.
He relates, “Six days was all we could provide for finished animations for this video, making no allowances for error. We brought in seven animators, all starting at the same time, which meant looking for the right style right on the live footage without any tests. Handing over a rig and animation almost on the same day has already become our thing! It is extremely difficult, but we are trying to make the most of the realities in which we work.
There were plenty of sleepless nights for everyone involved but you do whatever it takes to meet the goal. The positive response by the public who was eager to use this service made it well worth the lack of sleep, although we all enjoyed a good night’s rest after this project.”
The site was in fact so popular that within two days of use, the five hundred female names in the database (for personalizing videos) demanded expansion to over nine hundred additional name options to keep up with requests. Throughout Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, this new mail.ru service became the most celebrated of the season.
Writer: Coleman Haan