Zerkam / Back-to-School Campaign

Challenge & Execution

The main challenge was to create an emotional and human connection between Zerkam’s product characters and the audience—one that stayed true to the campaign’s central idea of friendship while extending beyond children and teenagers.

The idea of the “Imaginary Friend” came from a familiar childhood experience: almost everyone has, at some point, imagined a friend who was always there to accompany them. This provided an opportunity to transform Zerkam’s existing characters from purely visual elements into personalities with a meaningful role in the audience’s life—friends who are always there and with whom memories can be created.

The next challenge was bringing these illustrated characters into the real world without losing their original identity, visual characteristics, or personality. Using AI-assisted image generation, realistic versions of the characters were developed and placed alongside human subjects. The process went beyond simply recreating their appearance; body language, scale, lighting, camera angles, materials, and most importantly, the interaction between the characters and people had to feel natural and believable.

The final scenes placed the characters in everyday, intimate situations where the focus was not on directly showcasing the products, but on communicating companionship and friendship. Simple gestures, such as two friends leaning on each other, helped communicate the relationship in an immediate and universally understandable way.

This visual language was then developed into a series of billboards, supported by the line “Don’t Give Up on Your Friend.” The message completed the idea of the imaginary friend while creating an emotional connection that could resonate with audiences across different age groups.