Family Guy Fridays

Freeform officially launched Family Guy Fridays in January 2020 and asked Creative Mammals to give the weekly stunt a boost by creating a series of marketing promos as well as a broadcast toolkit for use by the in-house teams.

Family Guy, which first aired in 1999, is a long-standing and instantly recognizable franchise. For its pioneer journey into Freeform, we needed to find a way to re-imagine the show’s iconic characters in a way that was fresh, and unique, but that would still be relatable to an existing fan base. We had to strike a balance between upholding the identity of the show, and abstracting the characters to create a totally new visual narrative that would work within the Freeform brand.

After presenting four distinct creative approaches, Freeform decided to include all four in their rollout of Family Guy Fridays! For each of these promo spots, we created custom looks in Adobe Illustrator for the characters that would be representative of their personalities. Using clever VO samples and some slightly bizarre, physics-bending animation in Adobe After Effects, we were able to create an unexpected, and immersive experience straight out of Quahog. Then to round out the edits, we used existing footage from the show, creating a full, comprehensive storyline for each concept.

We’re also very excited to say that our work on this project earned Silver for “Marketing Creativity - Syndicated Program Promo” at the 2021 Promax Awards North America.