Liquid Gold Rush.
Liquid Gold Rush
Role: Art Director | Integrated campaign | Concept and development | Film, Director: Steve Miller | Print | Digital
There’s gold in
them there shelves.
To taste Velveeta is to experience processed cheese perfection — an experience likely to trigger an unholy obsession fed by the rush of Liquid Gold fever. It probably has something to do with it’s unmitigated meltiness, flawless consistency, rich creamy taste and smooth golden sheen. Whatever it is, people are crazy about the stuff and they’re not giving it up. So, whether it’s an undeniable craving for perfectly melted pasteurized cheese product, a yearning for warm cheesey nostalgia, or two hopelessly discombobulated prospectors staking their claim in a grocery aisle, we came up with this campaign to inspire Velveeta lovers to unhinge their appetites and give in to the lure of Liquid Gold.
Go on, GIT!
A couple of trail hardened prospectors from the 1850s discover Liquid Gold in a grocery store aisle. And they’re staking a claim.
Gluten Intolerance.
Call it whatever you want, the prospectors will not be tolerating any unscrupulous claim jumpers waltzing off with their treasure.
The Law.
Shelly and The Kid must contend with an onslaught of ornery cheese rustlers, hostile natives and shady lawmen to protect their claim.
Liquid Gold Fever.
Our prospectors endure psychotic episodes, acute dissociative paranoia and unpredictable weather patterns as the Liquid Gold fever begins to take hold.
Devil box.
Life along the linoleum trail is fraught with tribulations and malevolent apparitions.
Liquid Letters.
Our melting cheese type treatment reminded our fans of the golden, semi-liquid perfection and velvety smooth consistency of Velveeta throughout the campaign.
Oh Yes, there is a banner ad in my book.
You can’t quantify meltiness, but you can count click through rates and conversions. Somehow our Liquid Gold Rush banners broke every digital display performance record in the history of Kraft Foods digital display ads at the time. That’s for every Kraft Foods brand. Ever. Weird.
Rich
(‘n’ creamy) media.
To introduce Velveeta’s Liquid Gold fever to the digital frontier, and bring home the excitement of striking Liquid Gold, we created a rich media content hub loaded with Velveeta recipes, videos and an opportunity to claim the deed to your very own Liquid Gold mine.
One more thing.
I had this painting made to go behind the supermarket shelves at the end. Just to give the shot a bit of that cheesy western flavor. It could have also been because I’m a sucker for mid-century supermarket kitsch.
“Go on, GIT!”
I can’t remember if we actually had this line in the script or if Shelly just blurted it out on the fly, but it certainly earned us some cultural traction as people starting making it their own.
Style Guidelines: Research/Design/Copy by Jeff Hunter, Photography by Ben Fink
Hot & Fresh.
Recipes for taking your own delicious Liquid Gold photographs.
Everybody likes taking pictures of their food. And KRAFT wants them all to look as good as they taste. So, we thought it would be a good idea to show them how it’s done by writing the quintessential recipe book on how to shoot melted cheese.
Capturing liquid gold perfection on camera isn’t easy. You’ve got the cheese pull, the optimal drip, sheen, surface tension, temperature, ingredients… etc. So to get it right, we got together with a few of our cheesiest food photographers, master chefs and food stylists, and combined our melted cheese musings and years of practical experience to literally write the book on photographing Liquid Gold.