Ink bottle characters celebrating on top of a printer

Epson EcoTank social media campaign

We took the Inkies on an adventure for social media

Categories: brand

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The Inkies go on an office adventure

For more than 80 years, Epson's been serving up world-class tech with Japanese engineering innovation. Their EcoTank printers come with refillable tanks that save up to 95% on ink costs and provide three years' worth of ink in one mighty bottle set. Planet-friendly printing, with serious bragging rights.

The brief

Epson wanted to inject some excitement into their EcoTank social content. Their cute CMYK "Inkies" - existing Epson characters made out of ink bottles for their EcoTank range - were sitting there begging to be unleashed.

So our mission was simple:
Make the Inkies fun and engaging for social media.

Ink bottle characters doing yoga on a piece of paper

Ink bottle characters made into superheroes with capes

A sketch of ink bottle characters lounging around a pool

The process

The idea behind our designs - turning every day, mundane office equipment into fun and interesting scene builders - meant we could crank the creativity right up to 11.

We started this with pure, unfiltered creativity: big ideas, tiny sketches, and a whole lot of "what if the Inkies did THIS?"

Ideas included the Inkies on holiday, an Inkie yoga session, Inkie super heroes and more, seen above.

When it came to presenting ideas to the client, two concepts stole the show:

Ink bottle characters skiing down A4 paper

Sketch of the ink bottle characters on a podium celebrating

The Skiing Scene

A perfectly curved sheet of A4 paper magically became a ski slope. Inkies whizzed down the paper ski slope using Post-it notes as makeshift skis - proving that snow isn't required when stationery is involved. And when you’re an Inkie.

The Podium Scene

Office objects transformed into a winners' podium - because if anyone deserves gold, it's the bottles saving the planet one refill at a time.

Ink bottle characters having an office party

Ink bottle characters and a cartridge with spilled ink

The challenge

With Epson being a new client, there was a bit of detective work involved - learning their style, their pace, and what makes them tick. We streamlined our process to work quickly with what little we knew: sketch upfront, design second. And we soon found ourselves working together like we'd been teamed up for years.

Another thing we quickly learned is that, being a family-friendly brand, we had to curb some of our 'wilder' ideas about what the Inkies might get up to - particularly the office party and 'ink-cident' concepts, seen above. No problem - we can do good, clean, HR-friendly fun. And we do love a challenge.

Mockup of a social post using the podium idea

Mockup of a social post using the skiing idea

The result

With concepts approved, we built each scene from scratch - lighting, shadows, depth, vibes, the whole shebang - until everything looked plausibly real (and seriously adorable).
Then we rolled it out in English, French, German, Italian and Polish.

The final posts were fun, charming and scroll-stopping - the kind of designs you'd actually stop and look at on the Tube. Epson even said they'd "never seen anything like the skiing concept before," which lands firmly in the "we’re very happy with this" territory!

We turned everyday office ink into miniature adventures. We made sustainability cute. And we let the Inkies step into their adventure era.

And the best part? Epson has already hinted at wanting to work more with us soon. Creative mission (playfully) accomplished.

To be continued…