Big Kahuna is Pioneering Beering on GO! Saturdays 10:30pm

Posted by bkisbigblog on September 28, 2012

Big Kahuna’s typical role in the world of TV and film usually plays out off camera but in our latest venture we’re front and centre doing what we do best — imagineering your imaginations.

The Beer Factor is a brand new TV series on GO! presented by Hahn and hosted by Tom Gleeson that celebrates the wonderful world of beer by unveiling genius beer-related inventions by some of Australia’s brightest beer pioneers! Any beer lover with a clever invention that makes their beer drinking experience easier or more fun can submit their idea and if it’s got that special something, land on The Beer Factor to demonstrate their invention for a shot at the $15,000 Grand Prize.

Each episode presents a “Beer Predicament” that Big Kahuna helps solve like a beer safe to protect your bevvies in a communal eskie. See what brilliant inventions are on show this week!

Tune in Saturdays at 10:30pm on GO!

Ogilvy Impact Calendar: Not just another “yen-a-million” trinket

Posted by bkisbigblog on March 15, 2012

Client: FMCG

Agency: Ogilvy Impact

Brief: Fiji-Inspired, Interactive Calendar

Big Kahuna was asked to design an interactive desk calendar for Ogilvy Impact’s leading FMCG client’s top 100 retailers. Having just spent a reward junket in Fiji where the overarching message was ‘Make A Difference’, Ogilvy’s client really wanted the calendar to remind the retailers of their trip and the sales techniques they had learnt there. Our job was to not make something ordinary — we didn’t.

With a quick, pre-Christmas turnaround, the calendar concept Big Kahuna created a stunning multi-purpose unit with a subtle nod to the ‘Make A Difference’ message with cogs to turn the various calendar dials so the retailers could physically make their own difference each day of 2012. For instance, when the month dial turned a new sales mantra appeared and when the pencil is twisted in its holder the day dial turns.

Always keen to boost the function and not just the fashion of any piece, BKI managed to incorporate the requirement for a pencil/holder into the very mechanism of the bespoke calendar. The post-it notes are tidily recessed — so that they don’t wind up like most post-it notes! And there was spot for business cards which is a handy vehicle reinforcing the business’ acumen.

Key to the brief for Ogilvy’s client was that their special retailers would retain whatever was offered to them at the Fiji junket. All too often trinkets such as plastic pens or gimmicky “yen-a-million” novelties commonly handed out at junkets and conferences hit the bottom of a waste paper basket before the content upon it is even read.

Big Kahuna incorporated 20mm-thick, solid acrylic, CNC-routed and laser cut custom-fabricated assemblies made in Sydney, Australia, to perfection. Even the brilliant shot of Fiji is more than just a pretty picture…

We designed into the gifting process removable and replaceable profile-cut slides so the one-year calendar would have perpetual interest and hopefully captivate the reseller and reinforce their association with Ogilvy’s client.

Working with trans-light technology such that the key artworks were translucently printed directly onto polyester, Big Kahuna took four vibrant pictures of Fiji’s stunning land and seascapes provided by Ogilvy Impact but only provided one slide with each calendar leaving the remaining three with the client’s sales representatives to give to their clients at quarterly visits. So not only are the slides stunning, trip-reminding pictures but also the perfect excuse for a visit.

The strategy served Ogilvy Impact’s Shalini Gonsalves well in selling in the endurance of the proposed calendar over other styles — the repeat face-to-face prospects arising from a ‘reason’ for the retailers to multiply receive the FMCG reps.

Imagineering Our Clients’ Imaginations — A Peek into the Big Kahuna Imagineering Workshop

Posted by bkisbigblog on November 7, 2011

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSB_acKqmpI]

www.bki.com.au – Big Kahuna Imagineering makes cool shi… stuff. Models, Scale Replicas, Custom Builds, Props, Special Effects, TVCs, Character Suits, Creatures, Animatronics, Puppets, Experiential Marketing Tools… you imagine it, Big Kahuna imagineers it. Here’s a quick look at a few past projects that have come to fruition in our Sydney workshop and gone on to marketing stardom.

A few you may recognise like the Sensodyne Chill Test and Bankwest “Happy Banking” Characters but some you may have to stretch your memory to recall others like the pirate ships featured in a Mirinda TVC, interactive Toyota display and man-sized robot suit for Korean music video “Egg”.

Enjoy!

GIDEON’s Golden Shoe

Posted by bkisbigblog on April 9, 2011

: The BKI-built shoe debuted at GIDEON’s launch event in March 2011

Client: GIDEON Shoes

Brief: Create a fantastic, large-scale replica a sneaker from the Australian shoe label GIDEON

Our GIDEON Shoe was a HUGE (huge being the operative word) success! Seeing our handiwork fascinate the crowd at the Australian shoe label’s launch event in March was immensely satisfying after a pedal-to-the-metal week of fabrication.

: The Inspiration

From confirmation to installation, the Big Kahuna team had 7 days to custom fabricate a 3.2 metre, golden high top. Step 1: We had a decision to make — take the familiar and slightly easier option of sculpting the gigantic shoe from polystyrene like we did with the oversized Gel Kayano runner for ASICS a few years ago; or, take the road-less-traveled (and much more demanding) by handcrafting this stunning sneaker so that it as close to the real deal as possible. Being Big Kahuna (over-achievers and, one might say, gluttons for punishment), we went for Option 2.

Now, creating a large scale replica in 7 days is a feat in itself. But create a large scale replica using the actual shoemaker’s patterns with materials as close to the originals as possible, plus account for coordinating various suppliers, work schedules and the unavoidable switches to Plan B, C & sometimes D in 7 days time, is a bloody marathon (the rainy days didn’t help either!) But, to see the shiny, happy face

Half way there!

of Sneaky Sound System’s Daimon Downey as he told everyone, “The Shoe is here! The Shoe is here!” while the BKI team wrangled the goliath through the door, made the blood, sweat and tears all worthwhile.

Daimon was the one who told GIDEON that BKI was the one to make this shoe. As Matt Noffs of GIDEON and the Noffs Foundation (GIDEON is a social enterprise of the Noffs Foundation) explained, “Daimon Downey, who came up with the idea for the shoe in a dream he had, said ‘if Big Kahuna can’t make this baby, no one can.’ Then he disappeared in a puff of pink smoke. It was weird.”

In the end, the Big Kahuna team delivered a beautifully crafted, one-of-a-kind work of art that is more than just an aesthetic copy, but a tactile replica that GIDEON customers can touch, feel and interact with. We hope many customers sit on the toe of our Shoe to try on GIDEON fantastic designs for years to come.