Internet Meme ‘Scumbag Steve’ Becomes Focus of Latest Brisk Iced Tea Campaign

This is a Don Draper move if I’ve ever seen it: Brisk Iced Tea is working in Scumbag Steve, image hosting site Imgur, creative marketing agency Mekanism, and a hopeful community of meme-curators into an experimental type of ad unit that starts running this week.

Image hosting site Imgur now amasses nearly 2 billion monthly page views, a success that can be attributed in part to the hosting of hilarious image-based memes like Scumbag Steve.

For those unfamiliar, Scumbag Steve is an image macro series featuring a generally douchey looking kid with a sideways fitted cap standing in a hallway. The overlaid text generally consists of terrible, unethical and generally obnoxious things Steve does to his friends and the people around him.

The move to partner with Imgur and for a brand like Brisk iced tea to associate themselves with the likes of a Scumbag like Steve could prove to be a barrier-breaking and fruitful one.

Mekanism indeed walked a fine line with the concept, but they got approval from the “real” Steve himself (Blake Boston) and ultimately came up with an overlay text that wasn’t overly obnoxious, but had an overarching tone of promoting the Brisk brand.

How do you feel the ad stacks up? Better than traditional display advertising?

The ROI will undoubtedly be harder to measure on a campaign like this. But, if the image (above) can gain traction on the Imgur website along with making its way across the viral web, we can thank Imgur, Brisk and marketing agency Mekanism for further blurring the line between original content and advertising.

Thanks. Thanks, a lot!

[Via TechCrunch]