Blue Room’s image-makers have created a promotional campaign for Animal Planet’s 73- minute feature documentary Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, set to air on the network May 25. A slightly different version of the clever creative will promote the Meerkat’s fourth season on Animal Planet, which begins airing June 6th. The promotional elements began airing on May 17th 2008.

Meerkat Manor has enjoyed considerable success and is now Animal Planet’s top series, both on cable and through its video-on-demand service. The show’s experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and allowed viewers a long term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars.

Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, which had its world premiere at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, is an homage to the Queen of the Kalahari, Flower, a larger than life meerkat who passed away last year in mid-season as she defended her babies, and tells the story of Flower and her family.

Animal Planet gave the Blue Room team footage of meerkats shot against green screen, some web and movie concepts and asked them to create a whimsical promo. “Blue Room found the perfect musical track, put the meerkats against a white background grooving to the beat, bobbing up and down, heads moving back and forth, then added some red flying type and, as always, delivered a great promo. You give them a little bit of direction and they absorb it, incorporate it, and come back with something better than you were looking for and exactly in line with the creative that we want here.” Michael Eisenbaum – Animal Planet Marketing Director.

“We got great shots of the meerkats in their natural habitat, keyed them out and cleaned them up. Some of the clips were short, in others the actions could not be sustained over a long enough period of time to be useful. If we decided to populate our universe with meerkats, what could they be doing in groups that would be really whimsical? We pulled most of the visual universe from Animal Planet’s print marketing and then decided to create the illusion that these meerkats were dancing. We chose a baroque hip-hop track, as we wanted to allude to the idea of royalty, and the :30 music driven tribute to the Queen turned out to be the perfect solution to our challenge.” Brian Aumueller, Creative Director of Blue Room

About Animal Planet Media:
Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, LLC, connects humans and animals with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for entertainment, information and enrichment. APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in over 90 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; PetsIncredible, a major producer and distributor of pet-training videos and includes web service PetVideo.com; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.

About Blue Room:
Blue Room, founded in 2002, is an award-winning creative services agency that delivers innovative, attention-grabbing design, motion graphics and production solutions for high profile clients like History, NFL, RCN, Here TV, Versus, and Fuse, among others.

The strong partnership Blue Room has formed with its diverse client base is largely due to the comprehensive services the company provides. From concept development to final delivery, all of the resources one could need can be found in house. That includes: animation, visual effects, live action production, script writing, editorial, and an in-depth understanding of branding strategies. Visit the Blue Room website at www.blueroomnyc.com.

National Airdate: May 17
Title: campaign including a :30 promo for an Animal Planet feature doc Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins and promos for Meerkat Manor season four

Description:
Blue Room was supplied green-screen shots of the meerkats in their natural habitat. They keyed the meerkats out, cleaned them up, expanded the visual universe in Animal Planet’s print marketing materials and created the illusion that these meerkats were grooving to the beat of a baroque hip-hop track. The final promo is a :30 music driven tribute to the meerkat Queen, Flower.

Credits:
Production Company: Blue Room NYC

City/State: New York, NY
CEO/Executive Producer: Chris Gargani
Creative Director: Brian Aumueller
Editorial Director: Dave Gargani
Executive Producer: Mark Mutschler
Senior Designer: Steve Harper
Senior Composite Artist: Joonsuck Park
Composite Artist: Jason Vallen
Composite Artist: Leah L’Esperance
Producer: Lauren Muir

Hardware/Software: Adobe After Effects and Photoshop

Client: Animal Planet
City/State: New York, NY
VP/CD: Alexis Brunner
Marketing Director: Michael Eisenbaum
Stock music: Extreme Music