Creative Agency: EVB
To continue the "MindFreak" experience online, EVB produced Freak Your Mind, a digital campaign that enables a virtual audience to create and send freakish magic tricks to mystify their friends. To initiate the trick, users go to www.freakyourmind.com where they provide a friend's name, cell phone number and email address. Moments later, the friend receives a video email, sending them to a personalized site at time4vids.com. On the site is Criss Angel, who appears to be performing a magic trick. But wait, it's not a trick from the TV show, he's actually performing the trick on the viewer where he eerily reveals the person's name and phone number. The campaign self-destructs, and seconds later, the person's phone rings with Criss Angel on the other end, who reminds viewers to watch the upcoming season premiere of "Criss Angel MindFreak" on June 5. The Freak Your Mind campaign has spread rapidly since launch and is expected to be a major viral success.
-- Ryan Carver, art director, and Bob Goeldner, copywriter, EVB
Of course what often appears simple to the viewer is the result of hard work and detailed planning. Although not the first type of experience I've seen like this, the production quality of this experience is exceptional and clearly well planned. Details like the editing of the video and the change up of the presentation of the final card (the last digit in the phone number where Criss flips the correct number out of the deck of cards) adds a layer of believability that's often overlooked. And then… the phone rings.
"Let's create a viral campaign" is something that advertisers hear a lot. But ultimately it's the viewer that determines if a campaign becomes viral (not the advertiser or the agency). This experience has the right combination to likely be a viral success. It has certainly worked on me. I've freaked at least five friend's minds so far. Well done.
-- Kirk Drummond, VP creative and innovation, T3
As a journalist, I am a skeptic by trade. If my own mother told me it was my birthday, I would probably still check a few other sources just to make sure. But after watching a few episodes of "Criss Angel Mindfreak," even I think there might be something to this whole 'magic' thing. The show's unbelievable stunts test the limits of reality, and of Criss Angel, a charismatic tourguide through the world of illusion and mystical possibilities.
The FreakYourMind campaign is well aligned with the show's themes, imagery and overall feel. The user plays assistant to Angel, helping him fool a friend with a video and phone based trick that makes it seem like Angel is feeding off the subject's mental vibes right through the PC monitor. At the same time, the video provides a powerful way to get the intended message across: that "MindFreak" has returned for an all new season on A&E.
Yet, what makes magic so, well, magical, is not knowing how the trick was done, which is the one area that this campaign falls short. In order to amaze your friends with Criss Angel's personalized illusion, you need to send the link to the video by email or IM. Seeing my name attached to the email I sent tipped my friends off to my involvement in the scam. The ability to send the message anonymously, or directly through the site somehow would have been a bit more of a mindfreak(though this might not have made it through email spam filters). But by giving the uninitiated a taste of Angel's self-styled illusion mastery, the campaign drives curiosity-based tune-in to "MindFreak" without revealing any of the upcoming season's secrets. Neat trick.
On a side note, just as I finished writing this review, a commercial for "MindFreak" flashed on my screen. Ooh, freaky!
-- Jodi Harris, managing editor, Entertainment Spot