Working on the Canon brand for five years was fun. And a tale of finding a more creative expression for one of the world's leading technology brands. 

In the Spring of 2002 Mummadadda founder, Andy Mac, was engaged to work on the Canon brand's B2C proposition - mostly in the office printer and document management systems category. Where others saw B2C as creatively unpromising, Andy saw possibility. After all, business people are people like you and me - with a sense of humour and probably the same disappointment in tired and cliched B2C creative approaches.

A great example of seeing a more effective and exciting possibility in a hitherto uninspiring category was the Canon 'Colour Puppy'. The brief sought ways of demonstrating how Canon could help businesses control their colour printing output. Colour printing in an office is costly, hard to control and keep track on. Canon had the technology to solve this problem, but not an exciting creative way of telling that story. Enter the highly successful Puppy, who bounded across all media - display banners, websites, social, cuddly toys and trade stands at print conferences around Europe. The puppy's energy and  behaviour was the perfect way to dramatise a problem, and offer a solution. 

Over the next few years Andy Mac created a massive body of work for the Canon B2B category. The puppy is our favourite. What other brands would let you create an animal that was allowed to maul the brand identity? 

The success in B2B led to being briefed by Canon's B2C arm. One of the most memorable engagements was to be asked to create a TV ad for Canon Russia, and emerging market for Canon. Working with acclainmed film director Andy Morahan, we created two or three film vignettes that unified all of the Canon products in one storytelling device. Quite why a brief for a Russian market should involve under cover spies, assassins and gangsters, I don't quite know. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Starring Russian actress Ekaterine Guseva, we shot three ads in Prague, and had a lot of fun. They also worked very well for brand awareness.

The first ad establishes the character and how she uses the Canon products. 

The second ad goes deeper into her double life. 

This is just a small body of the work created and overseen for Canon Globally. Probably the crowning moment for working on the account was a project which sought to completely reposition Canon Globally, replacing the 'You Can' slogan with something more purposeful and rooted in a human need. The WE SPEAK IMAGE positioning was rolled out in press, outdoor and event spaces in the Spring of 2007, and is still used to this day.