Matt Damon’s fake press conference asks people to give a crap

By on Friday, February 15, 2013

On Tuesday morning a curious headline on Hootsuite caught my eye, Holy Moly, the celebrity gossip website, had tweeted: “Why is Matt Damon refusing to have a shit?”

In a surreal turn of events, it seemed that Matt Damon had given a press conference where he announced to gathered “reporters” that he would not be using the bathroom until everyone in the world had access to clean water and a toilet. A noble, if messy, strike…

Thankfully, before he could do himself an internal mischief, it transpired that this was a spoof press conference, complete with scripted questions from actors playing the roles of journalists.  The video was made in order to raise awareness of water.org, a non-profit which strives to provide access to safe water and sanitation, cofounded by Matt Damon.

The story went global, with the hashtag #strikewithme giving twitter users the opportunity to inform their friends that they too would not be going to the bathroom until everyone had sanitary facilities. Meanwhile the media got on board with toilet humour headlines, such as this one, my personal favourite from NME.

It’s quite easy to see the thinking behind this campaign; no matter how hard we try to pretend we’re sophisticated grown-ups, the truth is that we all find a bit of toilet humour funny and the creators obviously approached it with this in mind. A bit of childish hilarity also ensured that the serious message behind the stunt would appeal to the younger generation who had got behind Kony 2012 in such vast numbers.

Matt Damon’s spoof press conference video has been viewed over 400,000 times onYouTube, so it has someway to go before catching up with his infamous video with Sarah Silverman but according to an announcement on water.org Matt Damon is “also working with a group of YouTube creators on appearances scheduled to debut on each

creator’s YouTube channel, including ShayCarl, EpicLloyd, WheezyWaiter, LivePrudeGirls, Smosh, Stan Lee, Lisa Schwartz, and John Elerick” so expect to see more videos hitting the net soon….

 

Comments are closed.

Get the best creative brand campaigns directly to your inbox, every Friday!

Hide forever...