With football season around the corner, Buffalo Wild Wings has creatively grown wings to freshen up its brand. Its latest campaign stars a computer-generated (CGI) buffalo called “Hank”, voiced by Beck Bennett. The creative comes ahead of the NFL season kickoff.
Tristan Meline, Chief Marketing Officer of Buffalo Wild Wings, said the campaign is about finding the voice of Buffalo Wild Wings as a way of defining what the brand is all about and the role it plays in the guests’ lives.
Hank, the bison, has been empowered via special effects and animation handled by Untold Studios. The sight of the woolly bully walking into the diner and sitting will leave mouths and eyes wide open! It’s like a fantasyland.
Khara Wagner, president at Anomaly, said everyone has a memory of the brand. “But everyone in the country just spent the last few years enjoying beer, wings, and sports at home. The challenge was to bring them back again, or bring them in for the first time by showcasing the experience you can only get at Buffalo Wild Wings.”
Josh Fell, Anomaly L.A. COO and partner explained that because of the nature of what was in camera (everything but the buffalo!) and what wasn’t (the buffalo!), they ended up with nearly infinite variations of each scene. “Dialogue from take 4 could be used on video from take 1, and on, and on. So, we leaned into it.”
Fell highlighted that Beck Bennett was on set so that he and the other actors could find the natural rhythm of the jokes. “With Beck’s Saturday Night Live background, he’s an endless source of riffs and improvement and knew how to bring out of others. His performance in ‘Hank Song’, is one of my favorite earworms ever.” He added that it was crucial to Untold and the agency to keep it as realistic as possible.
Hank, in the commercials, ribs the viewers for assumptions they might hold about why he enjoys Buffalo Wild Wings so much, namely that it might be because he is a ‘Buffalo with wings’.
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