EMBER: A NEW DAWN

Concept and direction by me.

Ember are a pretty amazing company. They’re also a kindred spirit to The Mill, in the sense that they use a powerful mixture of design and technology to make the impossible possible.

In Ember’s case, they use tiny and intricate electrical systems to warm and control the temperature of the coffee in your cup.

In The Mill’s case… Well, take a look below.

This is how we helped Ember launch a brand new product — the world’s first self-warming baby bottle.

BRIEF.

Ember is an established name in temperature-control technology. They create beautiful ‘smart mugs’ that use cutting-edge design and intricate micro-components to keep drinks warm on the go. They asked us to help launch a brand new product — a baby bottle — in a way that drew attention to the technology inside.

APPROACH.

We developed a simple concept around the advent of this technology, positioning the Ember bottle as a ‘new dawn’ in infant feeding. This informed our visual idea — an exploration of the exploded bottle as the surrounding light changed from the rich orange of sunset to the clear blue of a brand new day. To this we added a subtle sci-fi twist, lightly referencing Kubrick’s 2001 as we explore the product features in woozy zero-g.

IMPACT.

The film went live across a broad range of media channels in March 2022, unveiling this brand new incarnation of Ember’s temperature-control technology. It positions Ember as a premium technology brand and a cutting-edge leader in infant care.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR TOM DIBB:

The thing that struck me was… this product is a very sweet way to use powerful technology and we wanted a little of that human sweetness to creep through in the film. Our number one goal was to showcase the beauty of Ember’s design and the components inside each bottle, but we wanted to do that in a way that began BIG, to embody this ‘new dawn’ moment, and ended SMALL, to embody the human intimacy of feeding a baby.

LEAD DESIGNER SAM SINGLETON:

We had a lot of fun during the development stage of this project. We placed the bottle in loads of different scenarios — from ‘milk worlds’ to desolate factories (with lasers!) — until we landed snugly with a warm sunrise narrative. We thought this was a great fit for the gentle, futuristic character of the product.