New retail marketing technology brings animated characters right to the fingertips of shoppers

Ever walk down a supermarket aisle and hear a couple of kids talking or singing?  Not so unusual – except when the two kids are cartoon characters on a small video screen fixed to the product shelves.  Not only that, the kids were quiet until you walked by and activated the video by your motion.

It’s called Shelfvision and it’s one of the latest tools in retail marketing technology.  Brothers Bud and Craig Mikhitarian of ACM Productions, Ltd. in Ridgefield, CT have produced a Shelfvision video that will enliven a shopper’s experience and entice the shopper to purchase Sani-Hands for Kids, a wet wipe product manufactured by their client, Nice-Pak Products, Inc.

The 30-second program for Shelfvision features Cora & Cory, two animated 3rd Graders who are the stars of “The Adventures of Cora & Cory”, a cartoon series distributed to schools and hospitals around the country to raise awareness about the importance of good hand hygiene.

As Craig describes it, “When you walk by the Shelfvision unit, Cora & Cory suddenly jump off the label of a Sani-Hands for Kids container to say ‘Hi’ and they ask you to press a button on the device.  When you interact with the screen, Cora & Cory sing their 20-second jingle, “The Jivin’ Hand Wipe”, which shows you the best technique to clean your hands.”

“Cora & Cory are like our own kids,” says Bud, who directed the video.  “But it takes nearly a village of people to ‘raise’ them from concept to reality.  We’re fortunate to have quite a talented team of creative artists who each add a vital dimension to the characters.”  

ACM drew on the talents of several Connecticut Chapter MCA-I members.  Radio personality and voice-over artist Joan Franzino is the voice of Cory. The recording was engineered at the studios of Alliance Video & Post in Stamford under the ears of Remo DeNardo and produced by Alliance owner, Bruce Colgate.  Emmy Award winning composer Bruce Zimmerman of Sound Productions in Hartford wrote the original score for the video.

Berlin Productions in White Plains, NY created the animation where individual elements of the scenes were created in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, animated in Macromedia Flash and composited in After Effects.  At the same time, 30 miles away in ACM’s shop, Craig was editing the scenes against the voice and M&E tracks.

Nice-Pak Products, Inc., headquartered in Orangeburg, NY, is the global leader in manufacturing pre-moistened wipes for consumer, healthcare, food service and industrial markets. The Shelfvision project is just the latest in a number of new marketing initiatives bringing Cora & Cory and Sani-Hands For Kids products to the public.

“Our focus is healthcare,” says Matt Schiering, Vice President of Marketing for Nice-Pak.  “Cora & Cory are one of the strongest brand icons I’ve seen.  These characters have the power to deliver an important message about good health, and the potential to grow our sales significantly as they raise brand awareness for Sani-Hands for Kids.  The Mikhitarian brothers have done an awesome job of bringing these icons to life.”

The Shelfvision device is supplied and installed by News Marketing America, one of the companies in Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate, News Corporation.  They will be test marketing the Cora & Cory video in nearly 300 supermarkets throughout the Northeast in 2008.  If successful, the initiative will expand to include other giant retailers nationwide.

So, if you hear a couple of enthusiastic kids singing about good health as you walk down the aisle of your favorite supermarket, it just might be Cora & Cory on a video screen near you.

Or, it could be your own children who are, as usual, a step ahead of you and have already picked up a box of Sani-Hands for Kids and are singing the jingle themselves as they wipe their hands clean of germs.  One can only hope.

About ACM Productions
Bud and Craig Mikhitarian are an award-winning team of filmmakers with over 25 years experience producing a wide variety of informational and entertainment programs for motion pictures, television, corporate and institutional markets.