To add a bit more family friendly entertainment to a sports game, many times a league or event organisers will host short games spectators can play in between the match itself. From a business standpoint, it is meant to engage the audience more directly. Nestlé wanted to take advantage of this strategy during Australian Football League matches with inflatable Milo mugs.
We’d actually previously worked with this client before on another brand activation, and we were thrilled to be asked to help them again!
The Game Plan
For this game, the event organisers wanted to have participants “make a cup of Milo”, combining a giant milk jug with a tin of Milo in a branded mug, and stir it together. These AFL matches were going to take place all throughout the different states of Australia, starting in Sydney. Therefore, in total, the client wanted 10 of these things.
Here at Inflatable Anything, we have almost two decades worth of experience with all sorts of inflatables. Although we have created our fair share of large replicas, mugs were a bit of a new challenge for us. Bring it on!
Mapping Out the Plays
Since we had worked with this client before, we already had all their branding files on hand, so it was just a matter of feeding it into our computer-assisted designing software and projecting it to fit the desired 90 centimetres high by 75 centimetres inflatable Milo mugs. Then we had to decide how best to print the logo and colours onto the fabric. As with all the business logos we’ve been tasked with recreating over the years, the quality of this label was of utmost importance for us because we knew accuracy would really help spectators make the association between the brand and the positive experience they had.
Typically, because of this regard, we offer our highest quality solutions, starting with the colour matching method and inks. Whereas CMYK can achieve a wide range of colours by layering cyan, magenta, yellow, and black over each other, it isn’t quite as precise as Pantone. This former method already has a standardised collection of shades and hues, and it’s added to constantly.
The second part of the process, obviously, is actually printing onto the fabric. For these inflatable Milo mugs, we used a full print, meaning the printer laid down all the ink at the same time. This is quite beneficial for a logo and branding for 2 reasons. Firstly, laying all the ink down at once leads to a more vibrant result. Secondly, this allows you to print an entire image, so a logo would appear uniform without a mismatch across seams.
Fine Tuning the Strategy
Now that we knew which inks and printing method would work best for the client’s needs, we had to choose between our 2 best-quality fabrics for constructing these inflatable Milo mugs: polyester or polyvinyl chloride. Both have very similar and very important qualities, so the decision really falls down to which polymer best supports what the inflatable is intended for.
These events and these inflatable Milo mugs called for polyester. The deciding factors ultimately were the ability to retain its shape, its ultraviolet resistance, the ease with which you can wash it, and its portability. That last one is especially important for any unit planned on being moved from state to state, reused over and over again.
We chose not to use PVC largely because of the print quality, and that meant we could not use a sealed off inflatable. The next best thing was sewn polyester panels that allow air to smoothly flow through the unit. Instead of being pumped full of compressed air and left for hours or somehow lugging both the inflatable and an external blower onto the field when we were ready to host the game, we opted to include a constant blower inside the inflatable Milo mugs themselves. This would have the added bonus of eliminating all the distraction of a noisy external blower.
Let’s Go!
We were put on a fairly tight deadline for this project, considering the amount of inflatable Milo mugs the client desired. Luckily, Nestlé only needed 3 of the inflatables for the first match in Sydney, so we definitely had time to focus on the quality of the final 7.
Here at Inflatable Anything, we are stoked to be able to help our fellow Aussie businesses provide their audiences with a fun and memorable experience. Contact our team of dedicated professionals today!
