No idea why the Going to Work for Subway pitch from agency.com ruffles so many feathers in the advertising community – aren’t we all putting ourselves out there hustling for jobs? From a programming point of view I actually quite like it. ‘Subway’ is funny in a very dry kind of way, fairly well-produced given the shoestring budget they most certainly had, plus it does get the message across to Subway: These guys really are after your account!
For an agency to use youTube and iFilm as viral platforms to get a potential client’s (and everyone else’s) attention is unique and probably a first. The piece seems in the vein of The Accountants webisodes spun off from The Office or clips on the Daily Show but it easily holds its own. Can it be that we recognize too much of ourselves in this mockumentary and can’t forgive when shows stop being ‘reality’ TV and start resembling real life?
Relying on the broadband tubes to give a guerilla project that extra push isn’t entirely new, though: Nobody’s Watching, the spirited sitcom about two Ohio guys’ love of good old sitcoms had been passed on by the WB in 2005 but eventually got picked up by NBC after the pilot was leaked to youTube and gained momentum there.
Using this blueprint, the cancelled Fox Television pilot The Adventures of Big Handsome Guy and His Little Friend recently made it into the digital hands of slubber.com and break.com. Fox has threatened with cease-and-desist letters but the creators seem happy since the miraculous appearance is drawing eyeballs and doing them some good.
According to break.com’s Keith Richman, around 250,000 unique visitors clocked in to watch part 1 of the pilot in their entirety, quite unusual for a viral site specializing in short form programming. Since the show is still under option, maybe somebody somewhere at Fox is looking at the numbers and reconsidering a pick-up?
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