Outback Steakhouse approached Ben & Julia to bring to life the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ in their inimitable style as the ‘12 Days of Leftovers’. Unexpected and guaranteed to get stuck in your head, the campaign built a world of hilarious food characters serenading the audience that quickly went viral.
Brief
Positioning themselves as the alternative to ‘leftover season’, Outback Steakhouse wanted a film that had heaps of personality and attitude, approaching Ben&Julia for their irreverent style and deep appreciation for craft and collaboration.
Experts in world-building, even the most surreal worlds, Ben&Julia hand-crafted twelve puppets each with their own distinct personality and sense of musical timing. This of-beat storytelling resulted in a film that lived beyond its initial format of a purely social media-first campaign to become a memorable chapter in the brand’s marketing.
Approach
Drawing on their inspiration from surrealist comedy, Ben&Julia approached the project with a passion to create something fun and fresh, unlike the leftover food in the fridge!
Focusing on the performance element of the film, animating a cast of puppets to song required a musicality and rhythm that Ben & Julia embraced wholeheartedly.
Design
Crafting a paired-back set that allowed each puppet food character to take centre stage, Ben&Julia designed and built the world around the puppets, playing with materials and contrasting finishes to create their unconventional cast.
Shot in New York with a dynamic team of puppeteers, the campaign was developed between Berlin and the US showcasing Ben&Julia’s expertise in large-scale productions and their global visual language.
