The Flex Seal Family of Products is the industry leader in the world of sealants, with a line of adhesive bonding products based upon the idea of liquid rubber. Its Founder, Inventor, Spokesman and CEO, Phil Swift, holds a unique position in American culture as a head of a company who is also a legitimate internet meme sensation, with over 6,600,000 followers across our platforms tracking both Phil and Flex Seal’s every online move.
Because of counterfeits and watchful competition, each new product is kept under close wraps until its launch date. In the spot, Phil rips the chicken wire off a chicken coop, coats it with Flex Paste and then fashions a boat out of it, proving its waterproof sealing power.
The objective behind the Flex Paste launch campaign was to create buzz around something new and exciting happening in the world of Phil and Flex Seal while keeping the element of mystery intact. The goal was to get people talking, or in this case, squawking, about what the heck a chicken has to do with Flex Seal, five weeks before the actual unveiling of the Flex Paste national spot. The idea was hatched, and a year later, the fans are still squawking about it.
To achieve our goals of increasing brand awareness, website traffic, product education, and expectations for future product launches, our in-house creative team set out to design content that would address each audience segment and generate interest while keeping the mystery of the product from publicly hatching too soon.
The first clue appeared on New Year’s Day 2020 with the line, “Get A Flex Start.” The visuals had a farm-fresh morning, beginning-of-a-new-day type feel. The zeros in 2020 appeared as eggs. The chicken reference was subtle, first revealing itself in a silhouette.
Little by little, throughout the pre-launch, we continued to release more chicken-centric content across all platforms, including an animated egg that cracked a bit more each day with a coming soon message. When the egg finally cracked, (well, actually exploded), it revealed our “Action movie” poster featuring a dramatic visual of Phil in a henhouse with the chicken on his shoulder and the line, “It’s Gonna Be Clucking Huge.”
Over 30,000 unique visitors populated our website to purchase the limited-edition poster, which sold out completely. Our pre-launch posts across all our social media platforms totaled over 11,600,000 impressions.
For the premiere, we embraced our stratified demographics and targeted influencers as well as media outlets that best serve our wildly different audience segments. Striking the right balance was crucial and by enlisting popular influencers, celebrities, news outlets, and fans, we were able to reach over 2,700,000 additional followers via our premiere packages being shared on their platforms. Our customized packages were enhanced with interactive elements that reflected the fun, enthusiastic nature of our brand and the excitement for the product launch. This allowed for the box to become as much of a spectacle as the live premiere it was directing the receiver to watch. The audience response was significant, with one influencer’s premiere package post garnering over 30,000 impressions alone. All of this culminated in a successful Live commercial launch on YouTube where Phil Swift interacted in real-time with thousands of fans who tuned in to stream with us.
While our pre-launch focused on building excitement and mystery, our post-launch focused on education and exceptional user experience. To achieve this, we created a series of videos titled, “Flex Ed 101.” We designed an interactive blog packed with tips, tricks, and videos. By disseminating the education pieces across all our digital platforms, we were able to reach over 29,000,000 viewers.
By modifying our creative work to address each platform, we maximized engagement and increased our total impressions. Since the premiere, our commercial has racked up over 15,000,000 views, while our supporting content has registered over 153,000,000 total impressions. Tier-1 outlets like MSN, Yahoo, and Business Insider all featured our newest product.
