Making Of “Meet Adam”, A Different Type Of Self-Promo

Creating a campaign for any client comes with positive pressure.
It’s an opportunity to flex your creative and problem-solving skills.
But to generate a good solution you also need a good brief.

Open briefs are the hardest. Being vague and without enough data to validate any concept or idea that comes from the team makes it almost impossible to solve.

Yes, you can come up with wild things. But will they be “on brand”?
Will they be relevant or relatable? And most importantly, will they sell?
Self-promotion campaign briefs are usually like that.

If you don’t have a strategy department that knows the company and the target inside out, you will only be able to create work that looks “cool” from the inside or at the industry level, but most of the time it won’t work or have any ROI.
Luckily, when the brief came in for Heraldist’s self-promo campaign, I was relieved.

It contained everything there is to know about startups and the people we needed to talk to and connect with.
Most of them founded startups or are growing one that makes a great product.
The type of product that makes the world a better place.
They believe in the “build it and they will come” mantra.

We needed to put a reality-check mirror in front of them to convince them they need our help.
But how do you persuade a CEO who believes they can do everything?
Or a CMO that only seeks cheap solutions and then micromanages every project?
Easy. You just show them how ridiculous that sounds put into words.

Enter Adam Wiser. The 184 years old startup evangelist with over 150 years of experience under his belt. And the only guy they would trust to do the job.
Now write a convincing speech, throw in some production value and a range of quotable messages like “Your startup doesn’t need a team. It only needs me!” or “Marketing sucks. Unless it’s done well and it sells.” delivered via pro looking visuals and bite-size clips and you’ve got yourself quite an entertaining campaign.

Big shoutout to Bob, our main actor, who did a great job of impersonating Adam Wiser (with a little bit of help from our make-up pros) and was still able to crack jokes after a 14-hour shooting day. 
Adam, while not a real person, does embody our team’s combined experience in the field infused with self-irony and humor.

And if you’re wondering, like us, if he can become a nice icebreaker that would make decision-makers wanna meet us and maybe buy our services, let’s run it together through a list of checkpoints called “The CD On The Wall”:
Is it an Irreverent idea? Totally. We should never take ourselves too seriously.

Is it Original? Very few things are, and characters are nothing new but in the startup world, I haven’t seen a similar campaign yet.
Is it Relevant? For sure, as it puts a cheeky mirror in front of those who create companies and try to grow brands by themselves.

Is it Memorable? I don’t know but I’d go for a beer with this guy.
Is it Simple? One character, one suit, one desk, one twist at the end.
Is it Brilliantly executed? Craft is about looking at every detail as if it’s the most important thing in your ad. And when you’re done, it doesn’t feel like an ad anymore.

By Andy Daniluc