What the *bleep* is Info-tainment?

Here at Monster & Bear, we work on the principle that if you can find a way to inform people, whilst also entertaining them, you are more likely to have that information retained. We call this “info-tainment”. And there’s a fine art to ensuring you genuinely inform, entertain, and get the audience to retain.

Let’s use a case study to better understand what we’re talking about here.
In 2018, a company named Ecosa came to us in order to produce a campaign film showcasing the features of a mattress they’d been working on for years. Inspired by the recently successful Dollar Shave Club viral “advert”, they came to us with the challenge: These guys kept their audience interested for minutes on end (doesn’t that feel strange to say?), how can we do the same with our product, and our features?

So – no pressure – create something viral that sells mattresses.
Truth be told, the first thing we tell clients when they want to try and make something share-worthy is that they better be ready to take some risks with their brand. If you break down what has ever “gone viral”, it’s got to tick several boxes. Whether it’s being topical, speaking hard truths, is hilariously comical, or is undeniably relatable, these are the things that resonate with people. In our instance, we wrote the concept below, and maybe you can tell us what categories this falls into:

As you can see, we’d been briefed in to target young mothers (apparent through scripting and casting) with a love for minimalism, cleanliness and design (apparent through visual cues and production design). This had been proven as the most likely demographic to purchase this product so this was the focus of our campaign, which hinged around one sole idea: As a young mother, you may not sleep much, so you might as well make sure it’s quality sleep. And thus, the idea of our savvy “SuperMum” was born.

The idea behind SuperMum was that we wanted mums to bond over the universal hardship of motherhood, whilst doing so in a comical fashion, poking fun at the typically flawless depictions of mothers in advertising. Across multiple platforms, this campaign has reached over 10 million views and counting, with comments screaming that viewers can’t believe they just watched a 3 minute “ad” and loved every second. But don’t worry, you don’t need to master the art of a video production concept like this. You just need to know how to call people like us.