My Ads Are Going From Poop To Gold Because of Harmon Brothers (Currently at Bronze)
I grew up in a fun-loving, film-loving family.
We never had access to cable, so we were limited to what was at the library or what dad would record onto VHS tapes at his office. We almost exclusively watched comedies from the 1930s to the 1980s. Laurel & Hardy, Bob Hope, Tim Conway, Carole Burnette, Milton Berle, and others like them became my teachers. My siblings and I would say their lines to each other to get laughs, but I tried for more than just the words — I wanted to become the character. I paid attention to their syntax, inflection, and accents. When I worked these lines into conversations, it became a mini-performance. I was simultaneously learning the skills needed to entertain others and a love for doing it in the first place. This love for classic comedy fueled my distaste for modern advertising.
Around the age of 14, I came to the conclusion that NO ONE was good at making funny commercials. After watching commercials that tried to use humor to sell a product, I would think, “That could have been better.”
I was already better at using our camcorder than my mother was (in other words, when I held the camera, the viewer didn’t feel like a tornado was ripping through the birthday cake scene), so I enlisted my siblings and set out to make something better. We made ads for Cheez-its and milk and whatever else we had laying around. They were terrible at first, but after a couple years of doing this as a hobby, they were…less terrible. I held on to the conviction that I could do better than what I saw on TV and kept practicing.
Over the next 15 years, advertising was always a part of my life in one way or another. My video projects got laughs in school, and students enjoyed reading my humor op-ed in the school paper. I went to work for a car dealership (after an exhausting three months in college) and was quickly promoted into their marketing department because of the “funny videos” I was making for my customers. When my wife and I bought a cafe/coffee shop called Jacob’s Well a couple years later, I began creating a lot of entertaining content. Our videos got, and I am not kidding about this, HUNDREDS of views on YouTube. We became the #1 restaurant in town, out of over 30 restaurants. That may be small potatoes to a Harmon Brother, but it was big potatoes to us.
Other companies in town began asking me to help them with their branding, and I started doing some work on the side. Soon after that, we sold our restaurant, and I started doing marketing full time.
I made good videos but struggled to see any real increase in sales for my clients. Some of my best videos generated lots of comments but not many customers. It was a very confusing time for me. I wasn’t sure why so many people liked watching my ads but were still signing up with the competition.
Enter Harmon Brothers, stage left.
Right in the middle of this confusion, I started seeing some good ads. Someone showed me the Poo~Pourri commercial, and I ran across the Squatty Potty and Purple Mattress videos on my own. There was a new wave of advertising coming, and I wanted to be on it. The Fiber-Fix commercial hit, and I was blown away. I showed the commercial to EVERYONE (sorry, everyone), and was single-handedly responsible for 2.5 million of its 30+ million views.
I remember telling a friend, “Everybody’s making ads in this new style. Poo~Pourri did it, Squatty Potty, Purple, and now Fiber-Fix. But Fiber-Fix has done it better than anyone.” A quick Google search revealed that Harmon Brothers had done the Fiber-Fix commercial, but when I got to their website, my mind was blown.
They did all of them.
I set out to learn everything I could about Harmon Brothers. I was convinced that this new style of marrying branding with information was the new kid on the block, and I wanted to be an early adopter…of that kid (okay, that doesn’t really work).
I watched all of their videos. I studied their style like I studied movies as a child. I noticed that each commercial followed a distinct pattern, and every ad contained a universal call to action, such as “So if you sleep,” or “So if you’re a human being who poops from your butt.” I began trying to figure out how to incorporate this style into my work, but Providence decided to hand it to me on a silver platter.
I got an email announcing that Harmon Brothers University was taking applicants, and immediately went and applied. THEN I called my boss to make sure it was okay that I applied (#communication). Luckily, he was really excited about it, and even luckily-er, we were accepted into the first ever Harmon Brothers University class (can I get a WHOOP WHOOP HBU Class of April 2018!?!).
That course changed the way I approach advertising. I experienced ontological shock as I realized I have been creating ads that were “surprising, but not fitting” for years. I learned that what I was calling a universal call to action, they were calling a “Harmonism” (narcissism is only okay if it makes something easier to remember).
I learned that I was BRANDING and not SELLING, which shed a little light on why people were loving the brands that I represented but not buying their products…To coin a phrase, you could say I learned the art of selling, without selling out.
We completed Part 1 of the Harmon Brothers University, “Write Ads That Sell,” which covers everything related to scripting a successful commercial. Currently, I am going through Part 2, “Make Ads That Sell,” which teaches Casting, Filming, Directing, and Editing (plus some). I am beyond excited to integrate what I’m learning from Harmon Brothers University into future projects. We haven’t made a “Harmon Brothers Ad” from start to finish yet, but are incorporating bits and pieces here and there already.
The HBU (how the cool kids say it) not only teaches you big-picture concepts, but also smaller practical tips for your videos. We have used their formatting advice, campaign testing suggestions, and scripting techniques in a few videos already. A new product we invented and brought to market in May of 2018 is already selling twice as much as we projected due to what we learned (and are learning) in the HBU.
Harmon Brothers gives me hope about the future of advertising. The flame of excitement I had for entertaining ads as a child, lost in adolescence, has been rekindled by their work. I have a strategy to my branding, now. A clearer path. A pot of Unicorn Gold at the end of the rainbow.
