Mr. Busey on business
"Gary Busey on Business," an online campaign featuring TV star Gary Busey, appeared on the 'net this month, bringing brand awareness — if not business — to virtual phone systems vendor GotVMail. In each spot, Busy shares left-of-field business wisdom and anecdotal entrepreneurial insights:
GotVMail, which targets entrepreneurs seeking inexpensive phone services, enlisted Busey to address everyday start-up problems in an irreverent way: from finding venture capital ("Never ask your family for money — you have to pay them back") to excuses for missing work ("I ate my kid's homework … and it was like salmonella hit me in the middle of the night right square in the face").
The 40-video campaign went viral its first week live (July 16), generating 100,000 impressions and hitting 160,000 since then, said GotVMail CEO Siamak Taghaddos.
The company's persistent blog outreach efforts likely contributed to those figures. "Gary Busey on Business" drew coverage from AdFreak, which called Busey "crazier than a sack of weasels," and even singer John Mayer, who called Busey brilliant and hilarious. Mayer's favorite Busey videos include his "great business idea": creating an "It's a Hybrid" sticker for gas-guzzling SUVS to avoid the wrath of environmentalists (shown above).
The videos were produced in-house. An outside agency's "tried-and-true methods" would have been inconsistent with the company's "do things differently" philosophy, Taghaddos told MarketingVOX.
But why choose Gary Busey? In addition to his "toothy grin and unsettling glint," it probably helped that his name was easy to turn into an acronym. GotVMail's cartoon mascot, GARY, represents its convoluted set of company values: "Go Above and Beyond," "Always Entrepreneurial," "Radically Passionate" and "Your Team."
The man can also be wise. Parting wisdom from Busey to business leaders: "There are 360 ways to see an elephant. If you put an elephant in the center of a circle, and go around that circle one degree at a time, you will see that same elephant in 360 different perspectives. GotVMail will reward you with that awareness."
It remains to be seen whether the campaign will contribute to business growth for GotVMail, whose competitors include Vonage, VoX and SinglePipe.
