bonfire

This week, I want to look at the latest viral/online video campaign for TAMPAX. It stars a pubescent 16 year-old named Zack Johnson. Zack mysteriously awakens to find the aim on his morning water-pistol is now resembling the buck shot of a sawed-off shotgun. The culprit? Zack’s “twig and berries” have been swapped out for a vagina by the magical vagina fairy-not really but   we’re speculating here.

Having lost his man parts, Zack struggles socially and physically in his day to day school life. Winged by his comrade Bryan and crushing on the school hottie, Chelsea, Zack documents his encounters on twitter @zack16 and his website www.zack16.com. 

Through social marketing and videos, Zack analyzes the pains of having PMS, hovering over a stall to pee, cramping, sudden weight gains and mood swings. A situation, as he states “I know what it feels like to be a girl and it's rough! I think every dude should have a period just once.” After experiencing what women go through, Zack quickly apologizes for men everywhere (yes this includes excessive pee on the toilet seat). The viral videos total about 12 minutes in all, while being broken up into smaller 3 minute versions for release.

The cleverness and genius of the campaign comes when you are subtlety given the campaigns promoter and creator Tampax during the last  2 minutes of the 12 minute video run. After realizing he is having a period, Zack strikes a chord with neanderthal ingenuity and creates a “man pad”  out of wadded up toilet paper, which of course, doesn’t work. He then sneaks into the girls locker room to grab a tampon from the Tampax labeled vending machine. Upon which, he returns to class right as rain, ready for next month. No Tampax sign off, no jingle, no website push, just that one hidden clue 2 minutes back.

Upon initial reaction, I had a hard time connecting the campaign to women and the targeted demographic. How could this 16-year old kid reach women across the nation and say after one day of experiencing what they have for the majority of their lives, he knows exactly how they feel? But I realized it’s not the age or demographic that is important here, but rather the message. What if every guy, just for one day, did go through a period and pms? Would we react differently to situations just as Zack? Will this campaign connect more to men and allow men, in turn, to connect to what the women in their lives are going through? This campaign successfully bridges the “you’ll never understand” gap between men and women and for that, I think it’s genius and women will respond to it favorably. 

Work by Leo Burnett/Chi-Town.

Have any thoughts or questions? Leave em' hear and Let's get a conversation started.

Recently my firm and I had the opportunity of competing for the most acclaimed and nationally recognized RFP in recent memory. International media company Current TV (www.current.com) put out an RFP for creative and advertising services on social media site Twitter. Led by brand manager Jordan Kretchmer @jkretch , agencies of all sizes and backgrounds from across the country were given the opportunity to pitch the account in a five day spand. Ideas limited to the imagination, firms were required to use twitter to qualify their agency for the pitch.

Some agencies, sent fortune cookies, some sent twitter messages.Others created websites and social media think tanks.One of the more memorable responses was when an agency out of Seattle hired a man to stand outside of @jkretch's California office with a sign for a website. Our agency decided to hack into a news station. Because what better way to tell the world about Current TV than to get in front of the world? Though we did not make the final cut, I was extremely proud of my creative team and for the work we accomplished. We came up with the idea, staged it, filmed it and edited it all under 24 hours. Though I truly believe our response was more creative than most firms chosen, I concede to the fact that firms like TBWA/Chiat/Day do have amazing portfolios with a proven track record of brand success and global strategies.
It was a great experience and amazing opportunity. It was also a great exercise to compete on a national RFP against some of the biggest and largest firms in the country. I'm now rooting for my new found advertising friend Steve, owner/chief creative officer of Stick & Move advertising to beat out the national firms and make a statement that it's not the size of the agency but the size of the idea which matters most.
See my firm's RFP video response below, let me know what you think.

There are many different theories floating around as to how the economy is effecting our business. Some we can fix and some we have no control over. It's a very trying time for advertising agencies and for the media companies that often work with agencies. That's why we've had to drastically reinvent ourselves to become smarter, faster and leaner. What's interesting is how brands have also been effected and how they too are becoming faster, leaner, and more media savvy.

I've recently read a blog written by Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group discussing how social media is changing the way brands interact with their consumers to a point where it is eliminating a need for media companies. As it seems, brands now more than ever are able to generate their own media, they no longer need newspapers or media outlets to be their middle-man of information. Brands are now able to post it directly on company blogs, twitter pages, facebook pages and then have that information spread by the consumer at a far quicker rate than any media source could imagine. I mean if you want news or information who better to go to than directly to the source? Below you will find Noah's blog post, I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

By Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group

"In response to articles by Scott Karp and Nick Carr about Google and the news business, Terry Heaton makes a point I’ve been trying to articulate for years : “The problem is that the distribution of content isn’t the real problem for media companies; it’s the growing ability of advertisers to reach people without media companies.”

Or, put another way, it’s the ability of brands to be their own media companies. If the Official Google Blog was a newspaper, it’s subscriber numbers would put it in the top 10 for daily circulation. Not only does that mean Google has less need for advertising, but it also means they have less need for media coverage generally. And it’s not just brands, it’s celebrities too. Shaq has 621,000 folowers on Twitter (and counting). As Kanye explained on his blog , “I told the media you can’t make up lies about me because I have a media outlet myself. Oh and sidebar I don’t know if everyone has realized this yet but I don’t do interviews if there’s anything I wanna say I’ll say right here on my own blog.”

Love to hear what you think about Noahs position.

To read more from Noah Brier visit http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts

To expand on this blog here is the clip of Ashton Kutcher winning the race to 1 million followers on twitter.What you will find most interesting is his comments at the 9:42 min-10:45 mark (you might want stop watching at 12 min mark when Diddy calls-it gets obnoxious).

"Look, at the end of the day this is about the changing of the guard. From the old way of consuming media to the new way. We together can decide, we can make the news on our cell phones, on our iphones, on our video cameras. We can edit the news, we can broadcast the news, we can consume the news. We can decide what we want to hear, how we want to hear it and we can get it faster on the web....This is statement that one man can have a voice as loud as an entire media company , you can have the voice as well and we can all have that voice."-Ashton Kutcher