Introducing the smallest, greatest love story of the year for Albert Heijn’s much-anticipated Christmas campaign. 

For over 10 years, Albert Heijn’s cartoon hamsters have helped bring ‘hamsterééén’ supermarket discounts to the Dutch. Meanwhile, supermarket manager Ilse and her family have shared many stories as stars of the brand campaigns. How could we combine these two worlds of Albert Heijn in a way that felt natural, heartwarming, and brought some extra love into viewers’ living rooms this Christmas?

Introducing Harry – Ilse’s lonely little hamster. He seeks a great love to spend Christmas with, and over the course of the action-packed 80-second TV commercial, we see him doing everything in his power to make it across the street and unite with the sweet neighbouring hamster Sally.

This was the first time the popular Albert Heijn hamsters had been brought to life with photorealistic CG animation, which presented an interesting creative technical challenge. We had to show these hamsters having emotional, human moments like gazing lovingly at each other and even drawing a love-heart on the window. How could we as artists find that middle-ground between emotive, human-like acting that helps move the story along, and natural hamster body movement that’s going to still blend in well enough with the other ‘real’ actors on the live-action set?

This was mainly done in the body movement; we actually animated the hamsters like dogs. For example, you can tell if a dog is happy because he wags his tail, or sad when he lowers his tail. On top of this we added typical movements that realistic hamsters do, like the nose that constantly sniffs, the ears that keep on adjusting and the twitching of the paws. Ultimately, it was about keeping the animation super subtle, believable, and most importantly - cute.

The TV commercial was shown on all Dutch channels with several short commercial tag-ons highlighting the special Christmas assortment. And it had a huge impact, helping secure the largest sales and highest market share ever in the history of Albert Heijn.