Wild Wild Web
Opera
Issue 59 | June 2021
Agency
TBWA\Helsinki
Date
February 2021
Background
Opera is a web browser that has been around since 1995. It uses less capacity than typical browsers so it loads pages faster than Chrome or Explorer.
Since the net is so vast, the company wanted to alert users and potential users to its weirdest, darkest and craziest corners.
Idea
In October 2020, Opera launched a recruitment campaign to find a Personal Browser, someone whose only task was to browse for fun and share the experience with the world. The winner would start hosting a series of six livestreamed episodes over a two-week period called “Wild Wild Web” on February 15th 2021 and get paid good money for it.
Applicants were asked to submit a 15-second video talking about the most significant browsing moment of their life.
From over 800 applicants, an American YouTuber, Gabe Helmy, was selected due to his experience in finding the most bizarre things on the web.
Results
The recruitment campaign obtained 962 articles and mentions. Gabe was paid $9,000 for his two-weeks work.
Opera is now about to recruit a Personal Browser in Germany.
Our Thoughts
Yes, it reminded me of ‘Best Job in the World’ too though this is more than a recruitment campaign for a cool job with quite a lot of money attached. It has also generated a lot of content and, yes, it turns out that there is a lot of weird stuff to be found online. For instance, in Episode 1, Gabe found payback.com, where you can send dead fish to your enemies if you really want. In Episode 2 he bought a magic show in Zoom. In Episode 3, he explored online dating including one site where you get paid to meet up with the date.
The brand message that comes through is, the whole web brought to you, not a skinny version of Safari or Firefox.