In the middle of last year a discussion aroused about the authenticity of the origin of the Propellerman, who was advertising himself and the legendary potency pill Mega Bang under the claim – unbelievable, unforgettable, wow! – in a truly rotary manner!
The creators behind this exceptional and extraordinary viral campaign are the creative collective THE BRAINSTORMCLUB, situated in Munich.
I talked to Yves Peitzner (creative director, The Brainstormclub) and Hondo Ratkovic (creative producer, The Brainstormclub) alias Propellerman (!), to find out more about the bizarre viral campaign and its “wow effect”:
Carola:
Which creative heads are behind the Mega Bang campaign and what is really the secret behind the art- and advertising character “Propellerman”?
Yves:
Idea, concept and production of the campaign were created by us, Hondo and myself. But that’s not all: Hondo brought Propellerman to live in giving him his face and I am the voice of Propellerman :)!
Afterwards DSG has supported us with the strategic seeding of the campaign on the web.
Carola:
How does one create a imaginary character, sending him with his rotating best piece though the web, advertising a fictional potency pill? Which intention is behind this idea for the Mega Bang campaign?
Yves:
Viral marketing primarily has to entertain, only then the user/ consumer is watching content voluntarily. This is why we created a campaign, which is fun to experience and also offers more than only one clip.
Often viral marketing is based on existing perception. In this case it is about the awareness of the Viagra spam problem: Everybody has received them – the Viagra spam-mails, which clog your inbox. They are perceived as negative and they annoy everyone.
We wanted to try to experimentally move this subject into a positive light and transform this into something fun. This is why we created a fictional product, which is marketed by our artificial character/ testimonial and Mega Bang creator Propellerman… By doing so, we wanted to satirize the annoying Viagra-spam problem and at the same time create a viral campaign for a non-existent product. We wanted to find out how this mechanism works and if it is possible to entertain rather than to annoy with this issue…and I think it worked very well with Propellerman :)!
Carola:
The Mega-Bang campaign doesn’t only exist out of one isolated clip, but it contains various campaign components. What are they exactly?
Hondo:
We have produced 3 different viral clips:
Furthermore we created a Mega-Bang product homepage and the Propellerman fan homepage, a MySpace profile for Propellerman, founded the Propellerman fanclub on Facebook and created a blog, on which the user could follow continuous updates on Propellerman’s live during the campaign.
On top of this we produced real, but empty boxes of Mega-Bang pills, which we distributed on the Cannes Lions 08 in bars, toilets, hotels etc.. The reactions on the Mega-Bang boxes immediately had an impact on the view count of the clips and homepages. Movie posters of Propellerman’s mega blockbuster “Kung Fu Armageddon” have made the campaign complete.
With this viral case we wanted to demonstrate, that if a viral campaign does not only exists of “one clip on YouTube”, but of a complex entertainment world around a product, the consumer will engage voluntarily with the product in an entertaining way, especially for a lot longer than a classic print or TV ad. The contact quality per user/ consumer is therefore much higher.
Carola:
With which success did you calculate? Did you reach your goals?
Yves:
The clip was distributed internationally on 25 seeding-hubs by DSG and caused countless discussions and speculations on over 350 blogs and websites in over a 100 countries.
Through the seeding the clip was also distributed on all free portals such as YouTube, Metacafé or Clipsfish. All together our Propellerman could generate over 2 million views – and that is of course a great result!!
Furthermore our potent superhero made it into television! Until now it has been shown on 4 TV shows: on G4TV (USA), on MoBuzz.tv (Spanien), on Channel 5 in the UK in the TV Show “Sexy Ads” and in German Television on ProSieben’s “talktalktalk”… I hope more shows are to follow :)!
Also the results have confirmed our strategy, as the user have been engaged for an average of 3,5 minutes with the product on the websites Mega-Bang and Propellerman.
Carola:
How is the reaction of the user on Mega-Bang? Do you really have serious requests for the product?
Yves:
Yes, we have serious licence agreement requests for Mega Bang from companies in various countries such as Japan, Rumania, Macedonia, Venezuela and even Saudi Arabia (!) to name but a few. We also have daily requests of individual persons, who want to buy Mega Bang.
Carola:
Will Propellerman entertain us in the future with his ultra stamina or will there even be new product innovations?
Yves:
We are just negotiating a licence deal for the production of a Propellerman Mini Series (over 50 episodes) for a mobile TV channel. Also we want to bring Mega Bang into the real world and are developing an appropriate product with a manufacturer (still secret!).
Carola:
Tell us a story of Propellerman’s everyday life!
Hondo:
Such questions I only answer on ladieswelcome@propellerman.tv
Carola:
Thank you very much you two for the interview and greetings to Propellerman :)!
