Pattison Outdoor Advertising recently participated in a project along the Toronto PATH, to help Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese introduce their new angel. Photos courtesy Pattison Outdoor Advertising
By Carly McHugh
Few will forget the saucy angel who pontificated the values of Kraft’s light Philadelphia cream cheese to TV audiences in the mid-’90s and early 2000s. Fast forward to today, when Kraft decided to bring back the popular campaign, and with it, the outspoken angel. They wanted to showcase the return in a way that conjured up the same heavenly look and feel as the original. Enter creative agency Rethink and signage powerhouse Pattison Outdoor Advertising.
This March, the team embarked on a project to debut the newest Philadelphia cream cheese angel to join the flight. Rethink provided several images to represent the general idea of what Kraft was looking for in the project. The three key elements they wanted to execute were heavenly chords, a halo, and clouds. They also had a vision to incorporate a staircase and/or escalator into the design.
Pattison brought Rethink to the locations they had in mind for the project, to help realize the concept. The piano stairs along the Toronto PATH at Metro Hall added an interactive element, while the adjacent escalators served as a callback to Kraft’s new Philadelphia cream cheese ad. Bringing the agency to the physical space made it easier to sell them on the concept and solidify the design.
The installation included five murals—three along the walls, a bulkhead mural above the stairs, and a floor decal at the foot of the stairs—as well as the stair risers and treads, a digital wall display, and an angelic hum sound file. The stairs would also need to play the hum at rising pitches as users walked up each step, which meant the existing piano system would need to be upgraded.
Supply partner Category 5 visited the space, measured the area for the murals, and created the templates. These were then delivered to Rethink to create and lay out the artwork. The agency also created the sound files for the stairs and delivered them to Pattison for installation.
