MRI Casino Marketing Blog
Marketing Results Selected as a Winner in the 36th Annual Telly Awards

It all began in 2013, when we personified a playing card and gave life to Jack the Daredevil for MRI’s holiday greeting video that year. Our business associates and team members developed an immediate fondness for the flat-and-fearless fellow, and knew we had a fun platform to showcase our storytelling capabilities.

When you do what you love, good things happen. We’re excited to report that Jack’s second year as our seasonal greetings ambassador has been a smashing success. Our 2014 holiday greeting video, entitled “A Holiday Goal,” has once again earned MRI a prestigious Telly Award in the 3D Graphics/Animation category. With nearly 12,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries, this is truly an honor.  (We certainly won’t let two consecutive wins go to our heads, but we can’t say the same thing about Jack.)

Our annual holiday video project is one we look forward to, and our early brainstorming sessions are always entertaining. Producing our Jack stories challenges us on all creative fronts. It requires inspiration and a clever concept, illustration, 3D rendering, motion, sound and music, all tied together with productive collaboration — and a great deal of computer processing power.

“We started the old fashioned way, with pen and paper,” said John Pace, Senior Art Director for Marketing Results. “Once we had sketched out the rough storyboard and were happy with the sequence, I proceeded to render some of the key scenes in Photoshop^®. We use those renderings not only to present a final storyboard for approval, but to serve as reference for our 3D Artist, Eric Edgerton, to model, animate and light the scenes.”

For 2014’s animation, John pitched the idea of Jack mimicking the movements of the tin players from vintage table-top hockey games. To highlight MRI’s singular focus on gaming industry marketing, poker chips and slot machines were incorporated in the animation, creating a tongue-in-cheek version of a hockey game.

As the concept grew, we soon realized that Jack couldn’t be restrained to just one move. Since this was a holiday video, it seemed a dance number was in order! Jack was dealt two new friends, and together the “three-of-a-kind” lit up the ice in a choreographed performance.

Through email blasts and social media posts, we invited all our colleagues, customers and business associates to watch our festive holiday greeting video on a dedicated landing page. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and Jack’s popularity has been cemented.

“We now find ourselves in the precarious position of having to top ourselves yet again,” John continued. “Hearing some of the exciting ideas that are already floating around this year, I’m sure we will have no problem achieving that.”

The winning imagination depicted in the 2014 Holiday Email Blast is just a starting point when it comes to what Marketing Results can do for you. With our capabilities, experience, knowledge and talent, Marketing Results offers a full range of marketing and creative services for your casino. Give us a call today at 702.361.3850 to see how we can take your marketing to the next level.