Your customers are not stupid

"Walk on water viral campaign"

The brand: Hi-Tech Infinity. Product: waterproof shoes

When I saw the video on YouTube “Walk on water”, it seemed to me pretty amazing and a super cool way to promote water resistant shoes.  

Watch the video:

 

Guys are talking about inspiration and if you believe in your dreams you can do everything. They are engaging the audience in a very emotional level by  touching values and saying that "people want you to think in a different way and this sport allows you to push yourself". It gives inspiration! They speak about the product as well, but it seems very natural thing to do after the words: “Me, my boots and I”. They are giving the tips how to do it and the most important tip they mention is believe in yourself.

After seeing this video, I thought  it’s a very creative viral video.  The engaging part is also cool. They developed the site where you can play a game, get the highest score and win a pair of Hi-Tech shoes.

Check it out, that's the good part about this campaign.

And then I started to read comments below the video and I found out more negative than positive replies. Thousand of comments like “Busted”, “I’m skeptical”, “guys, this is legit!”, “Fake so fake”, “fuck you guys i broke my leg trying to do this”. People didn’t believe in it. I still couldn’t decide my position when I found „Behind the scenes” video which was made 2 weeks after the buzz campaign was launched.  

 

I was so disappointed! The brand lied and afterwards they laughed about the customers.  They easily admited that the only purpose was to make their brand famous. In the video they  laughted about the values they spoke in first video and that’s a big, big mistake from a brand positioning point of view. First it  made me belief in something, but afterwards laughing. They said that it was just for fun and they wanted that the people think about Hi-tech in a different way.  Well, now they for sure I think in a different way, if before didn’t think anything about this brand, now I think negative. I don’t believe it really helped the brand.

It forgot a very simple and true rule: „Your customers are not stupid!”

Special thanks to my amazing teacher Filippo Selden for sharing this video!