Kraft Cooks Up 'Deluxified' Comfort for Frozen Mac & Cheese

Kraft Heinz introduces a freezer-aisle version of its iconic Mac & Cheese in the only way possible. And that would be with a cat the size of a couch, multiple doting grannies and a human-sized hot water bottle that gives you a hung.

Agency Johannes Leonard developed a trio of spots with directors Ian Pons Jewell and Yukihiro Shoda, who pack rad visuals into each frame.

These :15s are cute, accenting the “deluxified” comfort enjoyed by those partaking of the gooey treat. There’s also just enough oddness to keep eyeballs engaged, and a slight edge—perhaps unintentional—that raises each concept several notches.

Kitty will scarf down that cheesy mac—then make short work of the table. And handsy ba-ba needs to chill the heck out!

Speaking of chill, there’s also a limited-edition Frozen (A)isle Sweater “to keep you warm while you shop.”

“When we think of comfort, we might think of unwinding after a long day, cuddling your pet, or spending time with your favorite person,” JL art director Anna Cevallos tells Muse. “But deluxified comfort is a more fantastical feeling. So, we thought, what if the people pets, and objects we make ourselves comfortable with actually did the making? Dialing them up allowed us to enter a space with more oddity but still extremely comfortable, physically and emotionally. Which is inherently a weird thing to say about something like a water bottle.”

Although VFX obviously played into the films, “We built and constructed many of the deluxified items,” says agency copywriter Paula Gete-Alonso. “The humongous hand-knitted blue blanket (now warming up the Kraft team in their Chicago office), a giant furry cat tail and the bottle-man were all on set. We really hugged the bottle prop thanks to puppeteers!”

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