Animated TV Ad for Ziffit

Broadcast Advertising

Client | World of Books
Production | Buff
Script | Deej Johnson
Design & Animation | Buff
Sound Design | James Locke-Hart

Ziffit is the easy way to sell your books, DVDs, CDs and games online.

The Challenge

Ziffit (part of World of Books Group) re-commissioned us to write and produce their new broadcast and pre-roll advert to promote their trade-in app. This is our third commission from Ziffit and they were looking for an evolution of the previous campaigns we’d created using the same 3D character style. This time though, we needed to represent the two main types of personas that use their service: the avid book reader and the clutter-clearer!

“We are delighted with the quality and impact of the ads”

The Solution

To bring richness and production value to the animation design and the characters themselves, we decided to work in a 3D style. This is a move away from the 2D characters in Ziffit’s marketing previously. We designed a suite of colourful characters which have been updated and refined over the campaigns, extending to a child and a cat. The rounded shapes make the characters feel soft, warm and approachable. We used the brand colours as a starting point and introduced some softer tones to the palette.

The Ziffit adverts pack a lot of content into their duration. The challenge is to get all of the essentials into the video without it feeling too rushed. We carefully crafted the script to help achieve this and directed the voiceover artist who delivers it brilliantly to sound natural, but with sufficient energy and pace. The same artist has voiced all of the campaigns, and we’ve also kept the same music track throughout to help build brand recognition.

We enjoyed adding moments of humour through the animation storytelling. In this campaign, the male character is embarrassed when his clutter falls from the shelf. Previously, one of the characters winks knowingly at the camera and the cat meows when the box it wants to jump in is filled with books. We have delivered 10s and 30s ads in the past. The new campaign was delivered as 30s only based on performance data.

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The Impact

After the success of the first campaign which aired in the UK in 2019 and a subsequent revamp in 2021, we were asked to produce a third version for 2023. It was a great pleasure to work with the fantastic team over at World of Books who are now a certified B Corp and doing great things!

“We are delighted with the quality and impact of the ads that Buff have written and produced for us. We came in on budget and ahead of schedule with outstanding ads.”