The brand behind a cult online drama series where a boy wakes up to find his “guy parts” replaced by “girl parts” and develops a period has been revealed.
Proctor and Gamble’s Tampax has admitted it has been responsible for the work, starring a fictional 16-year-old boy called Zack Johnson.
The campaign has been spearheaded by a highly polished blog at Zack16.com, linking to a series of videos on YouTube where the story surrounding the central character unfolds.
Faced with the initial shock of losing his “guy parts down below” he writes, “Went to the bathroom this morning to find that I suddenly possessed the aiming ability of a defective garden sprinkler.
“Soon thereafter I discovered that a super important body part of mine had gone missing. Maybe it went for a midnight stroll and fell into a pond?”
To add to his missing part teenage trauma, he develops a crush on high school honey, Chelsea Carr, adding to the drama.
The drama comes to a climax when Zack starts to have his period in class, forcing him to be excused and rush to the toilet where he bundles some toilet paper down his pants.
“I wonder what pioneer women did when they got their period during a French class?” he ponders. But begins to feel distress when he realises, “I could feel the man-pad I made wasn’t cutting it.”
The answer to his problems? A Tampax from a toilet dispenser, or course.
The campaign has been created by Leo Burnett, Chicago, and sees Zack also hosting a Twitter account, @ZackJohnson16, with 961 followers.
Although the most popular video from the series on YouTube has been viewed almost 6,000 times , the stealth campaign has had pick up on other sites.
Part of the success has been down to subtle, rather than in-your-face blatant commercial branding, increasing its appeal to brand savvy Generation X.
P&G have described the project as “a learning lab on the net” and an inexpensive sideline to the Mother Nature campaign that fronts the brand’s marketing push.
See Zack Johnson getting his period by clicking the link below.
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