It’s 2013 on social media, folks. The Harlem Shake is huge, Grumpy Cat is on the rise, and Doge memes are everywhere. Many of you haven’t even made and then abandoned a Snapchat account yet.
So you can understand why a sponsored post where New Orleans Pelicans big man Anthony Davis “shaved” his eyebrow for April Fool’s Day seemed like a good idea. It’s 2013! This stuff isn’t completely played out yet. It hasn’t been thrown out of the playbook of every major company’s social media manager. No sir!
Still, many were not convinced when Davis posted this video on March 31 depicting the Pelicans star shaving his famed unibrow. In it, Davis conveniently is wearing a Red Bull towel on his shoulder that he doesn’t even use. The logos on the other two products were pointing away from the camera.
Subtle!
As Davis goes to shave his eyebrow, he “drops” the phone and when he picks it back up again, his unibrow has been shaved. It was essentially the equivalent of a “look over there” gag.
Then, on Sunday, Davis posted a photo saying it was all a big hoax. WELL I’LL BE.
Via Twitter:
Come on y'all!! Y'all knew I wasn't cutting it lol. #AprilFools We got ya!! @redbull pic.twitter.com/l4H63aOEAW
— Anthony Davis (@AntDavis23) April 1, 2018
I’m giving the Red Bull social team a 2/10 for both concept and execution on this one. Red Bull has a market valuation of like $20 billion, couldn’t they pay for some CGI? I think you could get someone who knows Adobe After Effects well enough who could have masked out his eyebrows -- that phone drop thing is low rent.
For Davis I’m giving him a 7/10 for good enough acting in a major social campaign and also for finally getting enough recognition to get a national company to pay him for a marketing stunt like this.
This is what I do now, I just review viral social media marketing campaigns.