How AWARD School graduate Jess Wheeler’s ‘Enchanted BBQ’ ad went viral around the world
Australia: Jess Wheeler is a junior copywriter and recent Australian AWARD School graduate, trying desperately to break into the industry.
There are a number of projects he’s working on, and one of them has gone viral over the last week.
On December 29, after much nagging from the Mrs, he put a satirical ad up on Gumtree to get rid of their old barbie.
After only 36 hours it approached 9,000 views, and he was inundated with texts, emails, calls and voice mails.
Since then The enchanted BBQ has gone viral all over the world.
Wheeler told CB: “I have been receiving messages from Brazil, South Africa, Canada, America etc… My phone and email have been bombarded with literally hundreds of messages.”
The ad ended up on BuzzFeed, The Courier Mail and news.com.au, NineMSN and Yahoo UK.
A Google search of ‘enchanted BBQ’ will find a number of links to internet forums and other areas where it is being spoken about.
Someone even made a piece of artwork out of the enchanted BBQ.
Says Wheeler: “The visitor counter crashed and was reset on the Gumtree ad, and we lost at least 100,000 hits unfortunately. According to LinkTally, it has been shared over 50,000 times on Facebook alone.
“I have received all kinds of hilarious, and often bizarre, messages from people including romantic advances and marriage proposals, people offering to trade their souls, a man offered to trade his wife, and one woman sent a message saying that the ad had saved her husband’s life by giving her a much needed laugh, which prompted her to ‘postpone a completely justifiable homicide’.
“I’ve had some offers of freelance work and writing gigs in the music industry and various areas, but really I just want to get into a creative agency as a copywriter.”
Wheeler is hoping a creative director reading this could give him his first chance in the industry.
He can be contacted on +61 412288198 or via email
4 Comments
I failed to see anything vaguely appealing in that ad; it’s just someone trying to say ‘look, i can write’…everything about the product was made up and untrue. That’s not what advertising should be.
Tut Tut. You are a fool.
Hope he gets the job he is looking for, but it won’t be because of this bbq ad.
When you put stuff out on the net, you have to be prepared for people to have all sorts of opinions on it. Good, bad or indifferent. Calling everyone who disagrees with your artistic pretensions a fool is one of the sure signs of a junior mind that has much to learn in life. But…carry on..and good luck….last I saw the bbq was still unsold.