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It's quite rare for an advertising campaign to penetrate in a sustainable way into popular culture, but even among this list of elites, the California Grapes are in a class of their own. In the 1980s, the vibrant group of rippled and purple R & B singers was ubiquitous, beginning with television commercials to quickly diversify into music discs, holiday specials, and other products.
One of the key visionaries of their success was Will Vinton, the founder of Will Vinton Studios and the man behind the credits of "Claymation." Vinton died Thursday after a 12-year fight against multiple myeloma, a cancer that targets plasma blood cells. . He was 70 years old.
Vinton, whose creations include The 1980s advertising icon The Noid, and the animated characters of M & M, was certainly one of the creative leaders who helped create The California Raisins, but it's his studio that brought this idea to life. a cultural phenomenon in the 80s and early 90s.
Originally designed by Seth Werner and Dexter Fedor, creators of Cone & Belding (now FCB) and Cone & Belding, this campaign was designed to drive the perception of raisins by consumers of less chic than stylish snacks. This is an ambitious goal, but the California Grape Advisory Board has given the go-ahead.
Selling the idea was one thing. But to make it work on the screen was something else. And that's where Will Vinton came in.
Already an Oscar winner (with his cinematographic partner, Bob Gardiner) for the animation short film Closed on Mondays of 1974, Vinton was asked by the agency in 1986 to create a launching starring starring The California Grapes, stylish crooners of R & B who covered the film "I Heard C's is through the vine.
After spending a month on character creation and animation, Vinton and his team unveiled the final result in September 1986. The work was soon to win the imagination of the public.
Soon, celebrities were eager to get involved, including the biggest star of all: Michael Jackson. In 1989, the King of Pop spoke directly to Vinton – the two partners joined Jackson's Moonwalker video project in 1988 and his Captain EO tour at Disney's Epcot – to come up with the idea of a partnership with California Raisins.
Jackson was very involved in the result, analyzing every detail of the appearance of his grape incarnation and choreographing each of his movements.
California raisins were an omni-channel success long before this term existed. They created four music albums, special television shows, a Saturday morning cartoon and an unlimited number of merchandise extensions. They even played in a Nintendo video game that was unfortunately canceled in 1990 due to the decreasing popularity of the campaign.
While marketing giant The California Raisins has imploded under its own weight, there is no doubt that the legacy of the campaign has continued. Personality-rich animated foods are now a staple of marketing (think of the red and yellow M & Ms that Will Vinton Studios helped create in 1995), and the California raisins themselves remain the face of their eponymous product, having been revived in recent years. by the California Raisin Marketing Board. The raisins even made an appearance in the 2014 advertisement of Radio Shack's Super Bowl "The 80s Called".
Vinton was certainly not a marvel to success. His "Noid" character for Domino's is another pillar of 1980s television.
But, like its historic advertising campaigns, Vinton's successful run ended up running out of gas.
In the 1990s, as Pixar released Toy Story and ushered in a new era of animated content, Will Vinton Studios worked tirelessly to continue their development with ambitious projects like The PJs, an animated series created by Eddie Murphy. But this growth has been difficult to maintain and Nike co-founder Phil Knight has been named an investor. As financial difficulties increased, the company was increasingly relying on Knight until it became the majority.
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