A great way for a brand to forge some kind of connection directly with their target audience is by participating in an activation event. After some back and forth, this was achieved for Print Logic on behalf of Western Australia’s Masters M flavoured milk beverages with a printed blow up bottle.
The parent company that spawned these slight variations, Big M, isn’t exactly a small business by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they’ve been one of Australia's biggest milk brands since the late ‘70s. However, gone are the bikini-clad adverts of old. For the past few years, for very good reason, the beverage supplier has been rebranding itself as a more down to Earth and relatable product, “out to play since ‘78.”
The client’s initial plan was quite ambitious. They wanted Inflatable Anything to create an inflatable carton complete with the logo that spun around. While creating a way for the audience to quite literally interact with the product (in this part of Oz, known as Masters M) was a fantastic idea, we knew there was quite a bit of work to be done before being able to pull something like that off. Still, we were excited to try our hand at this enterprising project!
Stirring It Up
Through our years of experience, we knew that a printed blow up bottle with moving parts had some risks that needed to be accounted for. First of all, the safety of said target audience is paramount, always. We would feel awful if one of our creations were to injure a bystander, of course, but it would be detrimental to the brand we’re trying to help elevate. With the size the client desired on top of the functionality, delivering a satisfactory solution seemed more and more foolhardy. That didn’t stop us from trying though!
However, part of our protocol for this kind of unit required outside experts to make sure the structure met certain standards and that they could officially certify it. In the end due to circumstance and time restraints, the client agreed to a printed blow up bottle that functioned as a large, stand-still inflatable replica of the brand’s Masters chocolate milk beverage. Inflatable Anything does have quite the expertise when it comes to this type of structure!
Tough as a Bull
Much like our arches that need a certain amount of durability to retain their shape, many of our replicas are made from polyester panels, and this printed blow up bottle was no different. The polymer, though used as a sort of fabric in this case, is actually more of a plastic that holds up really well. For bottles especially, there is a lot of detail around the lid area that just can’t quite be achieved as successfully with other materials. For example, polyvinyl chloride, while fairly strong itself, tends to pucker and stretch under any kind of stress.
Another quite important quality for an event like a brand activation is a realistic appearance. The printing quality on polyester panels tends to be better anyway because there is less space in between the fibres of the material, and therefore the colour stays more uniform. But in this case, we also used dye sublimated printing, which uses heat to open up the “pores” of the polymer and allows the inks to soak into the material, giving the printed blow up bottle a vivid, crisp, and exciting look.
As with most replica units we’ve created, we literally just up-scaled the actual product-in this case a 300 mL bottle of Masters M. The height of the printed blow up bottle needed to be 4 meters, so from there we just kept up with the proportions of the real-life receptacle.
Only Thing to Do is Jump!
Obviously, the solution we provided for the client wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. The original plan had great potential for an interesting and memorable activation event, but executing it just had too many potential loopholes to ignore. Though our thorough protocols and safety measures put a halt on this innovative design, the alternative structure we came up with was safer and more realistic. And, as you can see, the printed blow up bottle proved to be pretty engaging without the added features.
This was a rare, humbling experience for our company, but you can definitely rest assured that we will do everything in our power to bring your idea to life. Contact our team of experts today!
