Tony Chapman is the CEO of Capital C, the first non mass agency to win Marketing Magazine’s coveted Agency of the Year. Capital C is involved in new product development, ideation, and the amplification of their ideas across every consumer touch point. Their strategies and creative executions have been acknowledged with over 50 International or National Gold Awards, in the past four years. Tony is a recognized speaker, and his opinions appears regularly in the mainstream broadcast and print press. He writes a blog with his Creative Partner Bennett Klein and it can be found at www.capitalc.net (To see the video head to the bottom of the post.)
One Degree: What was the genesis of “Bride Wigs Out”?
Sunsilk Canada has a successful launch last year, but its tough to maintain the consumers attention, when the shelves are crowded with options, and the consumer is being bombarded with 6,500 messages a day. The USA team had come up with the ‘Wigout’ insight that our consumer target can have an emotional reaction to bad hair.
One Degree: How does the video sell more Sunsilk?
We felt that Wigout wasn’t ready for Prime Time. We needed to seed Wigout into Pop Culture and our targets vernacular – to set up the problem, so that our Prime Time Campaign, Stop the Wigouts will be more effective.
One Degree: It’s interesting how mainstream media got involved in this as the story started to evolve around the origin of the video, its subsequent removal from YouTube and then the public “outing” of the actors involved. How much of this was planned from the outset and how much was just going with the flow?
I can’t comment on an onging campaign other than to say we are thrilled with how the viral campaign crossed over to mainstream media, and in turn the fame that was showered on our Toronto Actors and Director.
One Degree: Given that this is Canadian initiative for an international brand I’m guessing the huge success of the video might have caused some push-back from other territories. What’s the response been internationally?
The massive attention the video received in the mainstream press caught many of us by surprise. I don’t work in any of the other Sunsilk markets, but I would imagine that any of those who is basing their marketing strategy on the Wigout insight can benefit from the awareness the viral campaign received.
One Degree: I’m hearing people saying that we’re getting close to burn-out on viral campaigns, particularly consumer generated content. What’s your take?
For 100 years we pushed messages out, and the consumers were captive. This is no longer the case – the majority of consumers under 30 have created and uploaded content on the web, they are equipped with digital tools, and it is easy for them to express their creativity or their commentary. It’s their day to to hijack brands and help shape them.
The Video