THE GUY WHO CUT EVERYTHING IN HALF

TitleTHE GUY WHO CUT EVERYTHING IN HALF
BrandDEUTSCHER ANWALTVEREIN
Product/ServiceLEGAL ADVICE (GERMAN BAR ASSOCIATION)
Category E01. Social Video
Entrant Company SERVICEPLAN Munich, GERMANY
Advertising Agency SERVICEPLAN Munich, GERMANY
Advertising Agency 2 PLAN.NET Munich, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Alexander Schill Serviceplan Chief Creative Officer
Benedikt Goettert Serviceplan Executive Creative Director
Philipp Stute Serviceplan Copywriter
Julius Steffens Serviceplan Art Director
Frank Meinke Serviceplan Account Supervisor
Christine Breithaupt Serviceplan Account Supervisor
Christina Mayer Serviceplan Account Supervisor
Nicolas Diekmann Serviceplan Account Supervisor
Florian Panier Serviceplan Executive Creative Producer
Dennis Fritz Serviceplan Senior Motion Designer
Franz Roeppischer Serviceplan Creative Innovation Director
Lorenz Langgartner Serviceplan Creative Innovation Director

Creative Execution

We started our viral campaign by uploading “Martin G.’s” video on YouTube. As we had no budget to promote the video, we used a unique way to increase the chances of our target audience finding the video: We let “Martin” sell all 16 cut-in-half items on ebay and embedded the YouTube video in every auction. We monitored Social Media to detect audience reactions. After a few days our auctions started beeing posted on social media and spread at an incredible speed. Within days the whole world talked about the guy who cut everything in half.

The video oft the guy who cut everything in half gained more than 7 million views on YouTube. Our message made it around the world and hit the news in 151 countries. “Martin G.” became the most talked about topic on Facebook for days. After we revealed the story in a press conference we gained a second wave of media attention. This time our message was spread word by word: prenuptials can prevent cases like that of “Martin G.”! After that, the traffic on the German Bar Associations’ online portal with free legal advice on prenuptials increased by 173%.

In Germany a divorce can cost you up to 50% of your belongings. Consulting a lawyer and getting an prenuptial agreement before your wedding can help to prevent that. But our target audience – young couples in Germany – did hardly know, talk or even care about this problem. The German Bar Association, representing 66,000 lawyers, wanted to change that – with a total budget of only 5,000 €. So we transformed the lawyers' message into a fascinating story: We invented „Martin G.“, a German husband who took "splitting" up with his wife literally. In an amateur-style video on YouTube we showed „Martin“ cutting his entire household in halves and sarcastically thanking his ex-wife for "12 beautiful years". Additionally we let “Martin” sell all cut items on ebay.