By now, you’ve probably seen the radical campaign from K-Swiss where Kenny Powers (a fictional character played by Danny McBride) takes over as CEO (ahem, mother***king CEO) of the company and reinvents their image via profanity-laced one-liners and no shortage of comic gold.
(If you haven’t, scroll down for the video. Make sure you’re wearing headphones at work and children in your immediate vicinity are wearing earmuffs. It’s not safe for work or childhood.)
It’s being lauded as marketing genius from a lot of smart people who know what they’re talking about. And why shouldn’t it? It’s cut through the proverbial clutter and (as of the writing of this post) has been viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube.
Pardon my (ab)use of buzzwords, but it’s been a viral success.
But before we thrust any more accolades, high-fives or advertising awards toward K-Swiss and 72andsunny (the agency that came up with the concept), I wonder if it’s worth examining the possible ramifications of their viral success.
The uncensored video:
(Ok, just watched this again. Forget what I said about the advertising awards, they’ve definitely earned those).
My gut reaction was split in two ways:
1. This is awesome
As a consumer of entertainment, I can’t get enough of it. You can’t look away from the screen when Kenny Powers is on it. He’s one of the most provocative personalities since Sacha Baron Cohen’s triumvirate of inappropriateness and he’s wildly entertaining. If you’re in the right demographic. Which brings me to my second reaction:
2. Is this right for K-Swiss?
Prior to this campaign, I would have told you that K-Swiss was a bit of a stiff brand, sort of “classic,” and for people who cared about their shoes staying white and matching other articles of clothing they were currently wearing. In other words: not for me. This is a tremendous leap in a different direction with a new target customer.
Maybe abandoning their old image will come back to haunt them, or maybe it’ll pull off exactly what they wanted to achieve. Either way, it’s messaging that gets attention, provides value in the form of entertainment, and is clearly getting media coverage.
But will that make a new generation of people buy K-Swiss? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps more importantly: will it make an old generation of people stop buying K-Swiss?
Jon Thomas has a smart take over on the Post-Advertising blog (which originally inspired this post and is definitely worth a read):
“It’s certainly not endearing them to their legacy fans that liked the upscale, tennis whites. But maybe they realized that those fans could only take them so far, and there may be an opportunity to take an approach so over the top that any other brand that tried it would only be imitating, not duplicating.”
What’s your take? Should my conservatism in the face of innovation be mocked? We both know Kenny Powers would think so.