Remember “Girls Don’t Poop,” the 2013 viral online spot for Poo-Pourri that eventually racked up over 35 million views? Or last December’s “Pooping Unicorn” spot for Squatty Potty?
Well, the team behind those spots, the Utah-based Harmon Brothers, are back with an ad for FiberFix—a product which, like Squatty Potty, was featured on ABC’s Shark Tank series.
The infomercial-esque five-minute spot opens with the titular redneck, played by improv comedian Jason Gray, asking the question, “What happens when you flip a car with a roll cage held together by duct tape?” as the car he’s driving seemingly careens off a cliff and, predictably, falls apart after rolling over.
Only that wasn’t the car he was driving, and its only passenger was a dummy. “But what if you used tape as strong as steel?” he asks. Enter FiberFix, which holds up a lot better during the fall. The rest of the spot features Gray presenting FiberFix as a “manly solution to manly problems” as he uses it for a variety of purposes in a garage. Unlike duct-tape, which “keeps the pieces together, without actually making things work again—like my birth did with my parent’s marriage,” FiberFix is presented as a permanent solution.
“Our idea was to take everything that’s good about an infomercial, get rid of everything that’s bad, and make it wildly entertaining,” Jeffrey Harmon told Adweek.
Harmon and company shot the opening sequence in an abandoned quarry near Utah Lake and the rest in a garage, so we’re guessing they didn’t exactly blow their budget.
While some may balk at the length of the spot, Harmon thinks it can hold viewers interest. “The mentality in the ad world is that five minutes is too long, but people will watch and share if it’s punchy,” he said. “The real test will be sales—does it make people click and buy?”