CREATIVE SHOWCASE

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Client: Mentos
Creative Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, USA

The challenge Mentos gave the team at BBH was to create a new piece of online communication that followed up on the success of last summer's "Mentos Geyser" viral video. There is nothing like being asked to follow-up on one of the greatest viral video successes of all time. Alright, that should be easy.

The idea for Mentosintern.com was simple: hire an intern, put him on a live webcam eight hours a day, five days a week, and allow anyone in the world to give him work.

The next step was finding an intern. The intern had to be someone who embodied the unique characteristics of the Mentos brand, but also someone who could put up with the challenge of being on camera and improving for eight hours a day without having a nervous breakdown. Luckily, we found Trevor.

Trevor undoubtedly makes this experience what it is. His quick wit, comedic timing and genuine good nature keep thousands of people coming back on a daily basis to see what he's up to.

It took a lot of courage for Mentos to want to do something like this. Think about it, a completely live, branded experience that hinged primarily on an unknown, green-as-grass 19-year-old from Owensboro, KY.

Most brand managers would have taken one look at those risks and said "thanks, but no thanks." Instead, the people at Mentos embraced those risks and were rewarded with a truly unique experience that has become part of pop culture.
-- Bartle Bogle Hegarty, USA

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

There wasn't much of a description, so I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I showed up at the Trevor the Intern site. From the moment I arrived, I was entertained. The site is a nice, clean implementation of some basic Adobe Flash Media Server components that have been used in a very effective way. It appears that this site has one very simple purpose: to develop Mentos brand awareness for the Gen Y demographic. I spent a good 25-30 minutes really playing with the chat function, (I played Hangman with Trevor along with about 12 other folks who were online) as well as watching what appears to be a site favorite where Trevor drops Mentos into a two liter bottle of soda and creates a Mentos Geyser. Definitely worth seeing.

Trevor was wearing a fairly outlandish mustard yellow vest on the day that I was on the site, and I learned after a short while that a visitor to the site sent it to him to wear. I can't say that if you are going to look for a metric on the use of a social/branding site that this doesn't represent at least some form of success for the Mentos team. The other features of the site were fairly rudimentary (Send to a Friend, watch some archival video, view the photo gallery from previous days), but they all tie in well together, including the use of Trevor's MySpace page (he has about 325 friends as of my writing). 

The campaign has been kept simple. They found a solid, young guy (a little dorky, very energetic and a lot of fun). I'd love to see the site statistics and see how much traffic they get throughout the day and know how many folks are sending it on to others. It would be nice to know that the viral activity is really working. But once you arrive, the branding is definitely happening, and if you judge success on the fullness of Trevor's calendar -- you can submit tasks for him to do, including ordering you lunch -- then I have to say that the word is getting out and the overall goal of creating a Gen Y sticky site is a success.

I had a great time and will probably continue to check it out just to see what Trevor is up to. An 'A' in my book.
-- Keith D. Pape, senior partner, FrontGate Creative

I began this review thinking about what the Mentos brand is all about. It's an anomaly, for sure, and this site fits how the brand has evolved into a rather organic quirkiness. Their tagline? "The Freshmaker." Those original Mentos spots, calculated or not, ushered in a whole phase of campy, over-the-top commercials. And the Mentos-Coke viral video, with its science profs-on-the-loose, inadvertently propelled the zaniness.

So I like the Trevor the Intern concept of this site as it relates to the brand and its oddball youth-orientation. The concept of an actual intern who will carry out various tasks for you is simple and straightforward.

And they didn't fall into the trap of throwing every 'net trend under the sun onto the site. After all, you're only as good as your weakest content. Sure, Trevor has a Facebook and MySpace page, but that's what you'd expect of any self-respecting intern in 2007.

As a character, Trevor is quite likable. He's well-directed, or well-scripted, or well-paid, or whatever they did, he's entertaining without the self-obsession that many of the YouTube video-biographer types come off with.

The only thing I didn't see that seems like it would have been interesting is a listing of the tasks he's carried out. It could have been entertaining and also provided context for what I could and couldn't ask for. But overall, I thought they did a good job on the site content.

Is Trevor a real intern or a prop? I have no idea. And I don't care, just so long as he carries out my task without any whining.
-- Doug Schumacher, president/creative director, Basement, Inc.