James Murphy

Creative Director :: New York office

Pepsi NEXT's Internet Taste Test, The Aftermath

As we’re sure you can guess – the team has been pretty busy over the past few weeks flying out to LA, working with editors and Funny or Die to complete our latest project: Pepsi NEXT’s Internet Taste Test.
Between three shoots out in LA, endless hours editing and uploading, the team pulled together over 480 videos of our Funny or Die improv actors trying out Pepsi Next for readers like you. 
We’re all finally back to normal, caught up on sleep and looking back as to how awesome this really was. We thought it’d be fun to share with you some of the results as well as some pictures and fun facts about the campaign we really loved. Enjoy!!
  • 480: Total videos shot
  • 160: Average number of videos shot over 3 days
  • 4: Sound stages used at one time
  • 237: Wigs and props used to create the characters
  • 3 1/2: Bearded Creative Directors from TBG (We’re counting Benjamin as he was traveling)
  • 20: Improvisors on set each day being hilarious
  • 1500: Approximate number of Pepsi NEXT cans opened on set
  • 1,500,000: Current views of the Rob Riggle Funny or Die video – an impressive statistic as branded content similar to this has never performed this well, earning “Immortal” status. 
  • 1: Dark Samurai caught on camera
  • 11: Improv actors filmed without their shirts on
  • Top media placements who wrote about us: Mashable, ClickZ, Brandchannel, Adweek, Adrants and Huffington Post
  • Top influencers joined the campaign early on: Greg Clayman from The Daily, Jonah Peretti from BuzzFeed, Funny or Die CEO Dick Glover, Webby Awards President David-Michel Davies and popular entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Ranked among the top 10 sassiest brands in social by Mashable
Now on with our favorites:








TWEET WRAP Lives!

Samsung wanted to boost sales of its RF510 laptop this holiday season in a fun and innovative way that leveraged social media. Our answer was the BOOSTED program. BOOSTED is composed of a trio of online mini-campaigns inspired by the turbo boost technology of the Intel processor that comes in the laptop.
The idea is simple. The holiday season can be so hectic, so everyone deserves a little boost and Samsung can give it to you.
Tweet Wrap is a site where a user can create their own wrapping paper that they customize with tweets. It’s a fun way to bring social media into the real world and give the user a customized experience that they will share on, and off line. It doesn’t stop there, the user can wrap their present and submit a picture of it to the Tweet Wrap Facebook tab where it will be judged on originality and can possibly win some great prizes from Samsung.
This is really exciting for us because this is something that steps beyond the norm of Samsung’s day to day product-focused advertising.
So perplex your parents and amuse your friends with your tweet wrapped gifts and keep your eyes open for more to come from Samsung BOOSTED.