Before a client ever becomes a client, we ask ourselves internally if that client’s product is something we use, love, and are passionate about. When we feel extremely passionate about something, that comes across and viewers respond to it.
At this point, the only people who haven’t seen the new Chatbooks ad are either a) living off the grid in a hut made of leaves and mud and foraging berries for food, or b) dead. So just in case you’ve recently returned to civilization, or been reanimated by a mad scientist, take a minute and check. It. out.
So good, right? This ad speaks to me. Which was the whole point. As a millennial-work-from-home-all-around-frazzled mom, this ad was literally made for me and my diet-coke guzzling people. But we’re certainly not the only demographic that has responded to this latest [Harmon Brothers](http://theharmonbrothers.com/) masterpiece. The video has 8.9 million views on Facebook and over 1000,000 shares. Chatbooks broke even on their investment in just a few days after launching the ad.“The Harmon Brothers are doing video in a completely different way — it’s funny, it’s sales and conversion focused, and it’s perfectly optimized for social media,” says Chatbooks cofounder and CEO Nate Quigley. “I heard Neal and Jeff Harmon speak at an event, and right away I knew we had to convince them to work with us.” Convincing the Harmon Brothers to work with you is not an easy thing to do. Harmon Brothers Managing Director Benton Crane estimates that they turn down one hundred potential clients for every client they accept. “Before a client ever becomes a client, we ask ourselves internally if that client’s product is something we use, love, and are passionate about,” Crane says. “When we feel extremely passionate about something, that comes across and viewers respond to it.”
After doing a deep dive and determining that Chatbooks is something the Harmon Brothers team loves, they embarked on a four month creative journey. The writing team and a team of Chatbookers retreated to a cabin in the woods to collaborate. “We just read and wrote and rewrote and read until we finally came out with a script and concept that we were really happy about,” Crane says. Then, Chatbooks completely handed over their fate to the Harmon Brothers. “We had total trust in the Harmon brothers and their process,” says Chatbooks CMO Rachel Hofstetter. That process included six weeks of preproduction and filming, followed by three weeks of post-production. “The trust paid off,” Hofstetter says. “The response has been absolutely phenomenal and entirely new normal.”
“We never aim for virality. We aim for conversion,” Crane says when asked what his team does to make an ad go viral. Sounds like a return to the classic chicken or egg debate, amirite? What comes first, virality of conversion? Or does it matter if you can have chicken and eggs for dinner? Because Harmon Brothers clients are certainly having their cake and eating it too.
“We really got to educate people about what the Chabooks series is,” Hofstetter explains. “That education will definitely continue.”
