Director Chris Lockhart and the motion crew at South African studio Masters & Savant craft a sleek and cheeky product film parody as part of Google’s (ultimately successful) campaign urging Apple to update their iMessage platform.

Roger Smythe, EP at Masters & Savant: “In their quest for improved messaging between Android and iMessage, Google built a campaign website called ‘Get The Message’, which was a public call for Apple to adopt RCS – a messaging standard providing modern features not supported by SMS.

“The David Agency Miami invited us to pitch on a new integrated campaign to push this message to greater awareness. Every September, Apple unveils a new iPhone to the world. The agency’s idea was to use this window to launch a parody product called iPager – a dig at Apple and a humorous throwback to the 90s when portability was a novelty and SMS was king.
 

“The campaign launched a week after the iPhone 15 reveal with fantastic reactions across social media. Less than two months later Apple announced they would adopt RCS as the new backup messaging standard.”

 
“For our first treatment presentation, we had a 3D device mocked up and a ton of gags to propose. We also threw in extra concepts with novelty case colors, dated catchphrases, and corny features. The collaboration on ideas was an instant success.

“The campaign launched a week after the iPhone 15 reveal with fantastic reactions across social media. Less than two months later Apple announced they would adopt RCS as the new backup messaging standard – finally supporting group chats, read receipts, and improved support for audio, images, and video.

“In the end, we delivered visuals and production artwork for the hero video and cut downs, packaging artwork for physical prototypes, YouTube pre-rolls, YouTube shorts, Instagram stories and posts, Twitter/X video, digital OOH, and print OOH.”
 
 

 

 
Client: Google

Agency: The David Agency Miami
CCO: Rafa Donato
Group Creative Director: Alejandro Juli
Associate Creative Director: Bruno Reis, Joao Corazza
Head of Production: Brenda Morrison Fell
Producer: Thiago Zveiter

Production: Masters & Savant
Director: Chris Lockhart
Producer: Kelsey Calder
Animators: Sean Frawley, Yolandi Meiring
Finished Art: Sean Frew

Music/sound design: Marmoset