Pleasure and art have always been at the heart of Magnum Ice Cream. That is why when the brand sponsored the Japanese Film Festival, one of the most important Japanese film festivals in the world, it knew it couldn’t just make an ad or give away free ice cream.

Instead of making ads, Magnum set out to make something that perfectly integrated with the content of the film festival—a short anime film series. The brand brought to life two stories, Konnichiwa and Butterfly, both connected by one common thread: the pursuit of true pleasure. Each film would be crafted in its own style, according to the story it was trying to tell, and with the single goal of entertaining its audience.

Instead of making advertising that interrupted the experience of our target. We chose to become part of the media our target audience wanted to consume, in this case, that was short films.

Each film was crafted to contain ‘easter eggs’ in the shape of the iconic Magnum silhouette and promoted like any other film in the festival, with movie posters that filled the city days before their big premiere.

Although Konnichiwa is set in the future, we wanted to avoid a cliché “futuristic environment” and made a conscious choice to go with a more naturalistic approach: a soft breeze, and a unique color palette based on the hues of the Japanese cherry blossom.

For Butterfly, we used classic Manga as our starting point. The film begins with precise line drawings and a simple black and white color palette that reflects the monotony that fills the life of the main character. As the main character finds his pleasure we see a transition in techniques, to a bright color palette reminiscent of watercolors and a much looser line style.

The work received great criticism amongst the festival’s audience, and the brand has been contacted by other festivals to talk about the possibility of exhibiting the anime series in other programs. But that’s not all, the work had an impact beyond the big screen as it was picked up by multiple media outlets, multiplying the brand’s reach and building upon Magnum’s already long history of championing art and pleasure.