Ericsson: EMEA Anniversary Mascot Launch
Agency: Everywherebrand
Role: AI Production Pipeline Design & Lead Animation
The Ambition & The Reality: To celebrate the anniversary of their EMEA market area, Ericsson wanted to introduce a new mascot named Wandah. The creative ambition was to translate massive corporate scale (over 10,000 employees and 59 languages) into an episodic, character-driven story. Working closely with Everywherebrand Creative Director David, we had to deliver a broadcast-quality animated launch film on a hyper-accelerated timeline, followed by a continuous series of regional rollouts. The reality of the brief meant bypassing the standard six-week 3D animation lead time entirely. We needed to deploy a generative video workflow to send the mascot travelling across major EMEA events, all while protecting precise corporate branding and managing sensitive geopolitical realities.
The Craft & The Workflow: We architected a proprietary image-to-video pipeline to handle the heavy lifting. Treating generative AI as our primary render engine, we utilised Leonardo alongside the Gemini ecosystem (incorporating tools like Nano Banana, Flow, and Veo) to lock the visual identity. This custom setup generated roughly ninety percent of the core animation. We focused intensely on character consistency and the correct emotional output for an ongoing episodic format. Through advanced control within Veo, we successfully generated the mascot appearing across various locations, from international airports to distinct regional landscapes, natively in the engine.
To solve generative constraints with complex physical state changes, we engineered practical post-production solutions. When the AI struggled to calculate the physics of the mascot hatching, we generated the action across a few separate shots. We then used precise blending in Premiere Pro and After Effects to stitch them together, creating the illusion of one fluid, continuous camera movement. The remaining ten percent of the process relied on classic post-production discipline. To map the episodic journey, we built dedicated travel graphics in After Effects. We used black and green screen compositing alongside a custom 2D puppet rig to chart the character's route across different host countries. Finally, we stripped out the unusable AI audio, applying a deliberately light touch to the sound design with just enough selective Foley to support the visual motion without cluttering the corporate messaging.
The Outcome: The campaign transformed a finite anniversary video into a highly agile, long-term brand asset. By integrating emerging generative tools with rigorous editorial control, we provided Ericsson with an efficient delivery engine. The mascot successfully took flight as an episodic series, travelling to major international tech events including MWC Doha, GITEX Africa, Core Network Summit Rome, MWC Kigali, Imagine Live UK, and many others.
Deliverables:
Hero 60-second launch film
Proprietary image-to-video AI pipeline design
Episodic event rollouts (MWC Doha, GITEX Africa, Rome)
Master static asset toolkit for omnichannel use
