nice&frank Caused a Month of Mischief for Sanrio’s “Scorpio Queen” Kuromi

While Hello Kitty is a household name just about anywhere, Japanese entertainment company Sanrio has a family of other characters, all with their own personalities, histories and brands.

One of these is Kuromi, a mischievous white rabbit with a hidden soft side; a darker counterpart to Sanrio’s cheery bunny character, My Melody. Kuromi’s ‘birthday’ is on Halloween, and so to mark the character turning 20 this year, Sanrio partnered with creative agency nice&frank to launch a spooky month-long celebration throughout October.

“Sanrio is a true, iconic legacy brand, and they really want to make more of the new characters more culturally relevant,” nice&frank’s chief creative officer Laura Petruccelli tells LBB.

Beginning with some horror-inspired teaser films, the campaign ‘Kuromi’s Month of Mischief’ brought together several of the world’s largest brands to create limited-edition merchandise and retail takeovers, tied together in a first-of-its-kind Roblox activation.

Collaborating with Hot Topic, Roblox, Crocs, Liquid Death, and BoxLunch, not only could fans get their paws on the physical merch, but the new collectibles and apparel were made accessible to fans as digital items via ‘Kuromi's Mischief Mansion’ at the ‘My Hello Kitty Cafe’ on the video game Roblox.

nice&frank’s creative director Grace Hwang shares a Halloween birthday with Kuromi, and helped lead a team, coincidentally of “nearly all Scorpio women”, to relaunch the character in a culturally attuned, modern and authentic way. “When the team that's working on a character identifies with it, it just makes the work stronger because you understand the insights of the character,” says Laura. “Grace was a huge component of this being successful because of her Scorpio tendencies that matched Kuromi's.”

“[Kuromi] is a Scorpio queen,” says Grace. “She's beloved for being the anti-hero of the Sanrio universe, she has a mischievous, sweet-and-spicy dual personality; she truly is a Scorpio in that way. That made her perfect for owning the Halloween season in October.

“Part of her lore is that she's this really fashionable rock star-inspired character, and Sanrio trusted us in protecting that part of her character,” she adds. “With that in mind, Crocs, Liquid Death and Hot Topic are all fashion-forward brands – and culturally relevant and modern. So they were the perfect way to segue her into this modern audience while also really honouring the fan base that has grown up with her iconic baddie self.”

To truly bring the collaborative campaign to life, the agency needed a simple idea that the various brands could easily find meaningful connections with, and Kuromi’s mischievousness proved to be the key. “Her DNA is this really layered personality, which gives her a unique ability to transcend platforms and genres,” explains Laura, highlighting how the likes of Crocs and Liquid Death share a similar cheekiness in their brand makeup. “She's also multi-generational, so you can kind of place her anywhere and somehow she makes sense.”

Kicking off the campaign, nice&frank developed teaser films that drew from different horror genre tropes and classic visuals, from Hitchcock to ‘Paranormal Activity’. “We loved grounding that content in ‘kawaii-thriller’, leaning into her infamous duality,” says Grace.

The collaborations during October then included the launch of special-edition Kuromi Crocs shoes, sold on sanrio.com, a Liquid Death x Kuromi apparel capsule, available at BoxLunch locations, and a national retail transformation of Hot Topic stores, creating Halloween hubs at over 600 locations exclusively selling items from the ‘Kuromi’s Mischief Mansion’ collection – from hoodies to collectible keychains and more.

These activations culminated in the Roblox digital experience, as every physical item came with a card that unlocked a digital version for in-game avatars. Inside ‘Kuromi’s Mischief Mansion’, fans could also play a spooky hide-and-seek minigame to unlock custom Kuromi-inspired avatar items from Hot Topic, Crocs and Liquid Death.

nice&frank worked closely in tandem with the brands and Roblox developers to use the game’s user-generated content tools to implement the digital doubles of the items, also offering the team some creative flexibility while navigating long and complex physical merchandising and manufacturing processes.

“We kept it really simple and embedded these products in a way that felt really easy for users to find,” says Laura. “What's so nice about tapping into gaming is that people just love to talk about their own experiences, so you can see reviews people are leaving online about the experience… We really leaned into those behaviours; people sharing the gameplay videos and sharing the outfits they've been building with some of our awesome Kuromi UGC. Getting that live feedback is really, really fun.”

Sanrio is more known for its merchandising and collaborations than its traditional advertising campaigns, whereas nice&frank had to quickly learn more about the former, studying the way Sanrio’s characters work across different platforms as “little brands, in and of themselves”. Laura continues, “Agencies aren't often involved in this process. So what’s exciting for us is to come up with this umbrella platform of ‘Kuromi’s Mischief Mansion’ and a ‘Month of Mischief’, and then collaborate with Sanrio to bring those partnerships to life, ushering them into the modern era.

“We added some of that platform brand thinking, which is how we think as an agency, and got to fuse that with Sanrio’s superpowers.”

Discussing the difference between marketing a character in this way versus marketing a more traditional brand, Laura shares that it’s an “enormous privilege to carry a character through culture” but an incredibly similar process – even if the opportunities feel bigger.

“Because people have adopted these characters into their lives, they feel really close and connected to them,” she explains. “So for us, it's about making sure we’re being protective as much as we are inspired by it: Would Kuromi do this? Would she say it like this? Would she look like this? [But] it’s the same as any other brand that we're protecting and launching.”

“Kuromi's DNA is so strong – her fanbase knows her and what to expect of her,” says Grace. “We built a platform around her for the month of October – a convergence of partnerships, both physical and digital – which this year might show up as ‘Mischief Mansion’ on Roblox, but who knows where she'll show up next year?”

As an agency, nice&frank understands the importance of creative platform building, meaning that original ideas can always be built upon in the years to come. “That’s a strength in the way we work; tight collaboration and honing the strategy,” says Laura.

“Our goal for Sanrio is to see what we can do each Halloween to make Kuromi’s Halloween even more memorable – and what kind of brand partnerships that could mean. It's very exciting to think about where we could take this as a platform and not just a one-off idea.

“Because this was such a different type of beast – it was nontraditional, and we got really excited about character IP and bringing those stories to life in new ways – it definitely inspired us as an agency too. I have no doubt that there'll be more to come.”