Bringing VanMoof’s brand vision to life

We are Makers At Heart. We create the extraordinary.

As the creative engine room of the world’s biggest brands we are driven by one purpose: to solve our client’s toughest briefs beautifully. Our Makers believe in the power of cooperation and partnership to deliver ambitious ideas to that break new ground and deliver awe-inspiring creative work.

Everything we do as a team makes great ideas come to life. We are thinkers, designers, artists, directors, producers, developers, colourists, coders, technicians, editors, animators, writers, doers and makers.

In our Makers At Heart series, we introduce the people behind the projects to hear more about their inspirations, motivations and creative insights. We spoke with Mill Creative Director Tom Dibb to get insight behind the scenes on how he helped transform VanMoof’s creative brief into a playful campaign to promote the brand’s range of electric bikes.

Talk us through The Mill’s involvement in the creation of this spot

This was a fun one. VanMoof came to us with a marketing brief — they wanted to create a multipurpose film aimed at people considering a purchase. The rest was up to us, we worked closely with the brand to devise and develop the full campaign — concept, script, design, animation, music and of course, the frog (can’t forget the frog!). So we did… everything.

What was the brief from Van Moof and how did you go about bringing it to life?

The brief was quite tactical, VanMoof wanted to create a film that was attention-grabbing enough to work on social, but modular enough that it could form several iterations as part of a targeted ad campaign. Togetherness and eco-friendliness were key messages but equally, we had a great product that we wanted people to fall in love with. So we started to think about how these pieces could fit together in a 3D execution and we kept coming back to this kind of 1960s counterculture influence — weird and beautiful art promoting community and green living. We took some inspiration from that. 

What separates this piece of work from previous projects you have worked on? 

I mean there is obviously a frog having a psychedelic episode in the middle of this film, and you could be forgiven for focusing on that, but where this project really shines is in the finer details. VanMoof bikes are built from an incredible range of parts and materials and we wanted to represent those in a way that felt incredibly real — like you could reach out and touch them. We were very lucky to have an amazing team of artists working on this and I think the beauty of the product elements really speaks for itself.

We’ll be releasing our Van Moof ‘Ride The Future’ Case Study soon. You can get in touch with our Creative Strategy team via our contact page to find out more.