Mr Knowitall
Issue 18 | March 2011
Agency
M&C Saatchi Mark Sydney
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Gavin McLeod; Creative Director: Josh Rowe; Art Director: Alex Booker; Copywriter: Mitch Alison, Matt Weston; Digital Producer: Leia Collingwood-Smith; Group Account Director: Mark Timmins
Production Team
Created in conjunction with the Make, the digital studio of Mark and digital technology specialist production shop Boffswana
Other Credits
Director: Luke Shanahan @ 8com
Date
October 2010
Background
Samsung Mobile recently launched the ‘Social Hub’, a feature that integrates all your messaging and social networks into one place. They asked them to come up with an idea to launch this product and also demonstrate how it works. In a first for Samsung, they were considering spending all their budget online.
Idea
The strategy was to create an entertaining piece of content starring a fictional character called Mr Knowitall.
Thanks to Samsung’s Social Hub, Mr Knowitall knew everything about everybody in his social life. We could then follow his adventures as he fumbled his way from one socially awkward situation to the next.
In essence Mr Knowitall was a cautionary tale that warned what could happen if you suddenly had too much personal information at your disposal. The takeout was clear: It’s a smart phone, ‘Use it Wisely.
To reinforce the social media capabilities of the phone, users were given the chance to star in a movie along with 4 Facebook friends. They pulled their names, profile pics and even the music they liked to make the experience more personal.
To demonstrate how the Social Hub worked, a secondary ‘social media timeline’ was created that unfolded along with the story. This timeline consisted of all the Social Media and messaging that Mr Knowitall was privy to. At any point you could interact with this timeline and get a real time demonstration of the product.
Results
The objective was to achieve 75,000 unique visits to the website. In the event, the campaign achieved 100,000, 21% over target
95% within Australia
Over 13,498 personalised videos sent within campaign period.
Our Thoughts
This was chosen as another example of the growing ubiquity of Facebook as a playground for advertisers.
When you go to www.mrknowitall.com.au and ‘cast’ four of your Facebook friends, the movie pulls in their Facebook photos so I could see them on the front of a newspaper, on a poster outside a cinema, and so on and so on. Entertaining, and the movie has some good moments. I laughed aloud when Knowitall approaches a pregnant woman. “You had difficulty conceiving, I know,” he says ingratiatingly. “Want to know who the father is?”
It’s an intriguing strategy. Warn potential customers of the exceptional power of the tool you are selling them. Nothing like telling people not to play with fire to get them to buy a box of matches.