The Richards Group / SAIC Monster Figurines

Challenge:
The Richards Group, the largest privately held advertising agency in the United States, came to Blink Marketing, Inc. representing its client, SAIC (Science Applications International Company), a $4 billion technology and engineering company. Blink was presented with the challenge of turning a fictional ‘monster’ from their nationwide ad campaign into a custom 3D figurine, complete with electrical currents for veins and red LED eyes. The figurine was to be distributed at tradeshows around the country.

Approach:
Blink Marketing project managers and design team immediately began close collaboration with the advertising agency creative team and designers along with the project leads at the overseas manufacturing facility. We created a realistic project timeline and turned the hand sketched pencil drawings into CADs for production. Once the CADs received the green light from the team, the project moved to production of the custom molds to capture the fine detail in figurine design and paint. Along the entire production process, quality control tests were performed on materials and construction of the piece. And because of the nature of SAIC’s business, we requested our own private testing above and beyond what is required by US Safety standards. Once the final sample set passed the top level workmanship/construction, flammability and lead test, we knew we had a winning promotional piece.

Outcome:
The end result was the transformation of a digital monster image into a 5.5” tall miniature 3D clone, with fine details in design, paint and bright red LED lights for eyes that SAIC reps would be proud to distribute around the country and beyond. The Richards Group and SAIC were so pleased with the outcome of the project and the feedback they received from the figurine recipients that they placed a large reorder of the monsters and then came back to us to produce the next ad campaign mascot – a custom knight figurine.