The World’s Biggest Most Awesome Waste of Time
Issue 16 | September 2010
Agency
BMF
Creative Team
Copywriter: Philip Sicklinger; Art Director: Corinne Goode; Creative Director: Dylan Taylor
Production Team
Production House: Luscious Films; Director: Sam Worthington
Date
January 2010
Background
BPAY is an online bill payment system in Australia. The organisation wanted to raise its brand awareness amongst young people who would just be starting to pay their first bills after moving out of home and starting uni.
The problem was, most people in that 18 – 25 year old age group couldn’t care less about how best to pay their bills.
Idea
Time is valuable to everyone. So the idea was to get rid of lame ways of wasting time, such as queuing to pay bills, and replace them with awesome ways of wasting time.
The World’s Biggest Most Awesome Waste of Time Competition invited people to waste time in spectacular ways.
Since the audience spends more time online than watching TV, they were invited to take part in the competition via Youtube videos of awesome time wasting stunts.
Posters and postcards around university campuses directed traffic to a website, where suggestions for how to waste time could be posted.
The winning suggestion would be filmed for real, giving the person who suggested it their own 15 minutes of internet fame.
Results
The videos were viewed a total of 142,705 times and resulted in a high conversion rate of 47% interacting further with the brand via the website, blogging or entering the competition.
Hits to the website exceeded expectations and beat target by 477%.
83% of traffic to the website came from referred sites, showing the campaign stuck, got people talking online and raised awareness of the brand.
The virals picked up Youtube Australia honours as #2 Most Viewed Clip and #3 Top Favourited Clip.
Our Thoughts
Some of the most irritating ads in the world are those that tell you how much time you can save. To do what, exactly? To be better parents, to have ideas, to grow my business, to indulge in a hobby, these are all suggestions advertisers have given me recently. Idiots. So the big idea from BMF is based on a fundamental truth. Mostly we want to spend less time doing the unpleasant stuff, like work, not so we can lead improved lives but so we can arse around. Be more self-indulgent than we already are. My guess is that this was a planner’s insight and while nine out of ten plannery insights are pretty shallow, this one isn’t.