Josh King

0:00 That's me when I was 16.

0:48 Seemed appropriate and I work at an advertising agency called Lean Mean Fighting Machine I work with my creative partner Andy give us a wave Andy wherever you are hey handsome chap over there also a part of a collective called King's dog and we do a bit of design work the odd jobs here and there building what not I'm going to talk about some pranks but first of all I'm going to talk about oh patio how did that happen I didn't choose that that was quite nice I'm so well reacting to the news and what I mean by this is doing a project or a bit of work that sort of Acts on so topical in the news so you find something going on the news say it's coming up say Mother's Day and you do a bit of work that will sort of steal the news in the papers and whatnot so example is a bad example of this recently was this I think some of you might have seen a Paddy Power decided that they thought this would be funny or useful for people. And it really wasn't it was a bit distasteful that's a bad example of jumping on a story going on the news a good example I saw recently was Ikea for Valentine's Day they said they gave you a token for a free baby free cop for babies born nine months from today so pretty much just encouraging sex so I thought that was quite nice another bad example is this one well it's in quarter days long before alleged shootings and beheadings of today which is just distasteful it makes the brand look really bad and this is a tweet just after the beheading of that of the soldier just makes a bad look the brand look really terrible and they got taken down and everyone had a big uproar about it and they just looked stupid now.

2:37 This is an example a good example and this came online a day after British gas said they were going to increase their gas prices so I'll play you this video hello would you do for living what's a British gas do you you're in one cup. And I'll give you a put my bills out you take that back.

2:57 Now I'll give you one as well I'll get you you bastard come back you've got it oh yeah you take that oh yeah no gas bastard you're old Scott take that take that where's the next bastard off of it oh there you are you bastard we find any Fountain juice thank you oh this is it ow that's it.

4:13 That's the end of doodle my two bosses at work made that video they made it because the British guests had raised their prices and they thought this is wrong so what can we do this was the same week that Grand Theft Auto had been released so they hired an old woman as an actress they got her in and they sort of sort of taught her how to use the controller if she didn't have a clue what was going on really they gave her a script of what to say just you know shouts swear words and whatnot they really tried to get her to say and she just about sort of mumbled it while she was playing and that got about 2 million views within the first couple of days and gone have I got news for you at the end of the week and my bosses were like little kids they were giggling and having the best week of their lives and that's the sort of stuff we're encouraged to do where I work so me and Andy a while ago now so everyone knows who this guy is and if you don't this is Sir Alex Ferguson he was the Man United football manager for 26 years or so and he's notorious for chewing gum every game he'll chew a little bit of gum through the stress and the Happy Times and as he was coming up to his retirement me and Andy thought we've got an opportunity here we've got a chance to do something that might stop a journalist just writing oh Alex Ferguson has retired and right our story instead so we had this idea that was to here's a little mock-up of it.

5:44 So this was to put a little bit of chewing gum in a nice container and and then we're going to put on eBay and we sent this round to our bosses and one of them replied just going just get on with it just do it stop asking should we should we not so we did and that was quite a good lesson for us because you know sometimes when you do these sort of things you I'm an hour about them for too long and you just don't get on with it.

6:08 But this we got on and did this is how it. Actually looked so we put it on eBay in a little container we've got a little plaque made a nice little Velvet pillow me and Andy both chewed a bit of gum and we we chose the most sort of spherical gun we were very particular about this okay it's Gotta look like a little footboard a little and we bought on eBay and the price started going up it got 20 quid 40 quid it got about 100 pound and we were over the moon we're going 100 pounds then it went up more got to 500 pounds 750 pound 750 pound this guy tweeted about it.

6:45 This is one of my favorite tweets of all time said rumored piece of Alex Ferguson chewed up chewing gum in a glass box is currently going for 750 pound on eBay now the I hate hashtags but this is the best hashtag I've ever seen in my life a hashtag found on floor is just brilliant I really like this I want to meet this guy just for that reason then it sort of went up from there went to a grand two grand five grand 10 grand we started we would just I don't know the rush of the feeling of it going up in thousands of pounds was just ridiculous it got to about 40 000 pounds and my dad called me because I told him we were doing this and my dad called me a man Josh you what are you doing it's like your mum's worried like you're gonna go to prison she's stressed out all right Dad relax it's fine it went up from 40 000 to 50 60 70 80.

7:42 I ended up getting to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds foreign at this point we thought we're in for an early retirement from advertising but then when it got to this price eBay suspended our account they just got rid of it they just went suspended it with no reason for for getting rid of it in a way that was good for us apart from losing 150 grand because there was no sort of Link back to us a few sort of papers and websites I started writing about it.

8:26 But there was no original source to ask questions and one of the first guys to write an article about it was this guy Matthew Nash who's a hero because he's from the metro and he wrote this story about it which was Fergie's final chewing gum raises nearly half a million pounds for charity unfortunately it didn't raise half a million pounds of Charity that would be nice but he because the Metro is such a credible Source he he sort of paved the way for all the other countries to jump on board and go oh this is a story to write about it's from the Metro must be true and we were getting tweets from all over the country every second this guy Robbie Harbison Alex focuses last piece of chewing gum sold at auction for I'd sell a Bullock and an arm for that it was all over the world it was such a good experience to go through and on and the next day on Andy's birthday actually The Daily Star Daily Star did an article about it. And it's his birthday and there's tits and his work on the same page I was so happy when I saw it my old Grandad saw this in the paper and called me to say it was in one of the papers but he couldn't remember which one which is a knife so we ran to the to Sainsbury's going through every paycheck come on.

9:49 And this is this little quote here is what really made it quite a nice project to be involved in was we're a little skeptical about this one but even if it is a joke it was a well-crafted one and I like that because it was you know a joke but it sort of says that anyone can especially creative people can do these sort of little jokes in there who's that guy all right. So it says as a creative people we can do these sort of jokes and whatnot but if we craft them well and doing them professionally and in this case sort of people will believe it and buy into it and there we are just before we went and got absolutely wasted that's it cheers thank you