Duracell 'Bench Boost'

For more than a decade, The Mill has partnered with Duracell to bring one of advertising’s most recognisable characters to life: the Duracell Bunny

From Christmas adventures to product launches and global campaigns, this long-standing collaboration has been built around one constant challenge: how to evolve an iconic character while preserving the personality, energy and visual identity that audiences around the world know and love.

With 'Bench Boost' created in collaboration with Duracell and VML, The Mill continued the creative journey, delivering a fully CG campaign that combines detailed character animation, rich environments and a deep understanding of Bunny’s unique DNA.

A character built over years of collaboration

Since the beginning of the partnership in 2013, The Mill’s teams have developed an in-depth understanding of the Duracell Bunny, from his personality and performance to the smallest details of his design.

Working on a character with such a strong visual identity comes with its own creative challenges. Every detail matters: from the colour and texture of the fur, to the shape of the eyes, facial expressions and movement language.

Over the years, the team has continuously refined Bunny’s rig, animation and performance capabilities, allowing the character to become more expressive while staying true to the brand’s heritage.

A dedicated animation library was developed to help maintain consistency across campaigns, bringing together approved poses, facial expressions and mouth shapes for different phonemes. With more than 50 expressions available, the system helps ensure that Bunny can communicate naturally across markets and languages while maintaining a unified global identity.

The result is a more nuanced performance: less theatrical, more subtle, and closer to the way a real character would react and connect with an audience.

Bringing Bunny’s world to life

For 'Bench Boost', the challenge was to create worlds that felt both believable and full of personality. As with all CG productions, much of the environment work relied on early visual development and detailed planning. Concept exploration, previs and look development allowed the teams to define the artistic direction, camera work and overall tone before moving into production.

A collaboration designed to keep going and going

From the high-energy 'Bunny vs Gorilla Battle' (2015) to 'Star Wars' (2017), 'Marvel' (2018), 'Alien' (2019), 'Optimum' (2020), 'Real Time' (2023) and 'Bunny Saves Christmas' (2023), each project has contributed to a deeper understanding of Bunny’s personality, performance and visual identity.

Each project has contributed to a growing creative language around Bunny, building a shared understanding between the brand, agency and studio teams.

'Bench Boost' represents the latest chapter in this journey: combining decades of character expertise with new production approaches and technologies.

For The Mill, technology is most powerful when it enhances what matters most: imagination, craft and collaboration.