A problem – street brand that had moved too far into the mainstream. The solution – an outrageous piece of graffiti, a daring idea and a provocative film leaked onto the internet before that was a thing. Matt Dawe, associate creative director at Enigma, has unearthed a brilliant piece of advertising. I wish I’d done it too. [:ed]
The year was 2006. MySpace top 8 politics were tearing friendships apart, skinny jeans were limiting a generation of young men’s future ability to reproduce, and the world was still reeling after discovering Avril Lavigne had been replaced by a clone called Melissa a few years earlier.
It was also during this time that some mysterious, grainy footage hit the internet and completely changed everything I thought I knew about advertising.
Of course, the video I’m talking about, and the ad I absolutely wish I’d done, is Ecko: Still Free (age restricted).
The 2-minute clip, with all the production values of the Blair Witch Project, showed a couple of mysterious blokes in dark hoodies leaping a heavily guarded, barbed-wire fence into St Andrew’s Military Base and spray painting the words, “Still Free”, onto the side of the US President’s personal aircraft – Air Force One.
As a 2nd year marketing student, I didn’t have a clue what it was about.
Was it a middle finger to Bush?
An anti-war statement?
Or just a couple jokers taking old-school tagging to a new level?
I didn’t care. I loved the hell out of it.
When it leaked online, the video spread like absolute wildfire (“viral” wasn’t really a word used back then). It made headline news on every major network around the world and racked up over 23 million views in its first two weeks of release, which in today’s terms would equate to around 91.7 trillion.
A few days after its release, the hoax was revealed. Masterminded by Droga5 for streetwear brand, Ecko Unlimited, it didn’t just break traditional advertising conventions, it lit a match and doused the rulebook with a jerrycan.
And for great reason.
No one would have noticed if it followed the rules.
Instead, it used authenticity (the real kind, not the hollow, meaningless version of the word that gets thrown around willy-nilly today) and focused on entertaining rather than informing. So instead of just another stale sheet of wallpaper, it created a moment that could live on for far longer than any media budget.
For me, this campaign is a poster child for relevance. By digging deep to properly understand audience and culture, it was able to earn the attention of everyone from a kid dark-sliding a picnic bench through to the top brass at the Pentagon.
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