Merrick Watts unveils latest stunt for Posca Hydrate
Comedian and media personality Merrick Watts, co-founder of Posca Hydrate, has unveiled a bold out-of-home stunt to raise brand awareness for the “original sports drink of the ancient world”.
Combining chaos, comedy, and “gladiatorial” mischief, the campaign challenges Aussies to ‘Find Merrick’s Billboard’. Across the country there will be hundreds of Posca billboards, via the Outdoor Advertising Collective’s (OAC) network of assets, encouraging people to get involved.
And somewhere in Australia will be a single billboard custom created by Watts himself. One lucky person who finds it will win a major prize. The catch is that Posca won’t say where it is, what it is, and what Watts has done with it.
Watts teased it to Mumbrella, describing it as “one of those billboards that people are gonna stop and look at”.
“It’s a double take kinda thing,” he said. “And that’s the point of it. Obviously there are lots of restrictions and guidelines in outdoor advertising, and that’s fine, we adhered to those. But the definite intent was to have that second take, second look.
“I want people to say, ‘hang on, what did I just see, is that real?””, he said.
But the billboard is so elusive, even Watts doesn’t know its location.
“This won’t surprise anyone, but no one is telling me anything,” he told Mumbrella. “Here I was thinking they were trying to protect my integrity. It’s not that, it’s actually that they just don’t trust me to know.”
He said he and the team wanted to have some fun with the brand, as it is a part of Posca’s DNA. The challenger brand has a “no regrets” ethos, and as he has told Mumbrella before, they “don’t do anything half-baked”.
“I’m very serious about what’s in the can. I’m not so serious about the rest of the world,” Watts told Mumbrella. “I’m very personally, very very serious and aware and knowledgeable of what’s inside. But outside, it’s playtime.”
Much like his Gladiator II stunt last year, where he ambushed the film’s Sydney launch with a guerilla marketing campaign, he said it “seemed like a good idea at the time, and now it’s happening”.
He told Mumbrella: “So much of my career has actually been based on that exact thing, which is, and I quote, ‘sounds like a good idea, let’s do it’. And then a few weeks later, you find yourself doing it. But that’s what I love.”
The six-week campaign launched on Monday across OOH, and is supported by social and digital channels. Overall, it hopes to generate talkability and earned attention, raising brand awareness in Posca’s signature untraditional way.
The major prize consists of two return flights to Rome, the “ancient home” of Posca. The catch? They are the cheapest tickets one could find, with an estimated flight time of 57 hours.
“I said let’s make them super economy tickets. Let’s get the cheapest possible. Whatever the lowest economy one is, that’s what we can afford,” Watts said. “I even asked if there is an airfare between economy and cargo.
“It’s part of the fun, the idea of going to Rome but being economy class.
“We’re not dressing up what we don’t have, we’re a very transparent, natural brand. That’s the way we like to act.”
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