Animation Meets Activation for SC Johnson's Zuzu the Hermit Crab

When a plastic bottle becomes a home, something remarkable happens. In Scholars Film's campaign for SC Johnson, created with Ogilvy Chicago, a hermit crab's odyssey becomes the lens through which we witness plastic waste transformed from crisis to hope.

Ogilvy Chicago's creative strategy was elegantly simple: make SC Johnson's global recycling efforts resonate with hearts, not just minds. The breakthrough came when one of their creatives spotted a news report showing hermit crabs using plastic debris as shells.

From this insight, the agency developed the concept for Zuzu's journey. "We had to build a story that was epic in that it traversed multiple continents. But simple in that it had a small, slow-moving crustacean at its heart," reflects director Colwyn Thomas.

What emerged was Zuzu - part victim, part hero, entirely captivating. His journey from beaches to recycling facilities would make the invisible machinery of environmental change suddenly, powerfully visible.

The genius lies in transformation. Those abstract recycling symbols on packaging suddenly have a face, a struggle, a triumph. Zuzu turns statistics into story, making the distant personal and the complex beautifully clear.

Scholars Film approached this with their signature blend of meticulous craft and creative spontaneity. Collaborating with BITT Animation, they created something special - a character so authentic that audiences believe he's real, yet expressive enough to carry profound emotional weight.

"At Scholars, we love character and narrative along with the technical aesthetic of filmmaking. BITT adores making beautiful, realistic animations imbued with strong character. That shared love of character is where we met and what made this partnership so strong," Colwyn explains.

The production philosophy embraced discovery. "We figured out a lot of the story and what Zuzu would do on the go. The world at the scale of a crab presents all sorts of interesting logistics you don't consider as a human, like how does a crab untie a knot of string or avoid getting stepped on in a market? Marcos from BITT and I, along with Niels and Tim from Ogilvy would brainstorm in situ to understand these little micro responses that Zuzu would have to his environment," Colwyn recalls.

Magic emerged from adaptation. When pigeons refused to cooperate during filming, creative problem-solving transformed frustration into one of the film's most delightful moments. "My DOP, Devin Carter, suggested that Zuzu could pop out of his bottle and scare the pigeons away," Colwyn recalls. "It's now one of my favourite moments in the film."

The environmental message achieves something rare - urgency without despair, awareness without guilt. "One idea was to make sure we filmed dirty plastic in beautiful places, using the contrasting aesthetic to drive the message. Zuzu did so much of the work just being a crab in a plastic shell. That says so much on its own," says Colwyn.

"We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the audience, with many viewers commenting on how adorable and realistic Zuzu is - some even believing it to be completely real," notes the BITT Animation team.

SC Johnson has helped keep the equivalent of five billion bottles out of oceans and landfills. Zuzu makes this achievement tangible, transforming abstract environmental progress into an epic we can all join. Sometimes the smallest perspective reveals the biggest truths.

See more work from Scholars Film here.