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A nontraditional software campaign with a presidential appeal

April 28, 2008 on 4:29 am | In Money |

NEW YORK: Fifteen years ago, a presidential candidate named Bill Clinton spoke often about believing in “a place called Hope.” Today, there is a presidential candidate named Ray Hopewood - but believe in him at your peril.

That is because Hopewood is a fictional character, the focus of an extensive campaign - advertising campaign, that is - for a software company called BigFix. The humorous campaign is, appropriately enough, being waged in the nontraditional media.

The Hopewood character, a smarmy zillionaire who made his fortune selling software, is taking on the Internet trappings of a real presidential contender, complete with his own Web site (rayhopewood.com), blog (blog.rayhopewood.com), pages seeking friends-cum-supporters on facebook.com and myspace.com and a page on flickr.com (flickr.com/people/rayhopewood/).

There is even merchandise being sold on behalf of the pseudocandidate, including bumper stickers, T-shirts, tote bags and zany items that are supposed to tip off people to the jocular nature of the campaign. They include “presidential briefing” underwear, a “frat house memories” beer stein and a “campaign trail thong (made in the U.S.A.)”

The campaign, with a budget estimated in the thrifty five figures, is created by Rassak Experience, a San Francisco agency that specializes in online advertising as well as what is known as viral marketing, so called because the goal is for consumers to help spread the sponsors message among themselves through word of mouth and e-mail.

Rassak created a viral campaign for BigFix last fall, also featuring a make-believe character. In that instance, he was a sketchy software salesman, forced to testify before an imaginary Software Truth Commission in Washington. The intent was to make the point that the security-software products sold by BigFix can be trusted.

The campaign last year was deemed popular and effective enough to try another viral initiative, said David Appelbaum, vice president for marketing at BigFix in Emeryville, California.

“We are a small company in a very established space and our competition tends to dominate the traditional media because of their ability to spend,” Appelbaum said. “To cut through the clutter becomes a challenge. Viral ads are our best bet.”

With last years campaign, he said, “we were able to sell product while entertaining people and building the brand.”

“If you entertain them, if youre willing to give them something, theyre willing to give you something” - time, attention and perhaps even money, Appelbaum said. “For us, the software truth campaign was perfect,” he said, “and it was extremely successful, generating about 400,000 visitors” to the BigFix Web site (bigfix.com).

“Forty-five percent of the Web traffic to our main corporate site was originating from the viral campaign” last fall, he added, and it is “still driving traffic.” The video clips can be watched at bigfix.com/softwaretruth.

Like the campaign last year, the new effort has a political theme, which Appelbaum said is meant to take advantage of all the early interest in the 2008 election. “And what could be more sleazy than a software sales rep?” he asked rhetorically, then answered his own question by adding, “Its a mogul who made all his money on software running for office.

“You get two for one,” Appelbaum said, laughing, “a politician and a software mogul.”

The Ray Hopewood character - played by Greg Wrangler, an actor who also portrayed the dodgy salesman in the campaign last fall - is deliberately being presented as a dense, clueless kind of candidate. He is personifying the competitors of BigFix, which in the imaginary political world are financing his run for the presidency.

For instance, Hopewood is described as once having told Business Week magazine: “I live large. I made 25 large by selling large software to large companies. I am Ray Hopewood and Im larger than life.”

The Hopewood campaign slogan is the impressive-sounding but meaningless bromide, “The technology to be president.” In the introductory video clip on the Hopewood Web site, which can also be visited through the BigFix site (bigfix.com/rayhopewood), the character begins his speech with a sincere recitation of an old political joke: “My fellow Americans. And you are my fellow Americans.”

And on his Facebook page, the entries from the character include howlers like this: “Ray Hopewood has just noticed a small leak in the waterbed on the jet.”

Although the character is intended to be a super-rich dope, “hes got to be likable on a certain level, a love-to-hate anti-hero,” said Barak Kassar, president and creative director at Rassak (which the discerning may notice is “Kassar” spelled backwards.) The campaign, he added, is “a joke, obviously, but if we can keep them guessing for five seconds, its an interesting way to tell a story.”