Subservient Intern

Viruses mutate and evolve. Just as we become immune to one, another variation is there to take its place. The same holds true for viral marketing. Years ago we were blessed with one of the most bizarre Web endeavors I have ever seen in the form of Burger King’s Subservient Chicken.

Since then, there have been many variations of these online diversions, including Sundog’s own Carol of the Chins and Summer of the Chins. But these “dance, monkey, dance” diversions were all limited to the amount of actions set by their creators.

Mentos has now taken this concept a step further with mentosintern.com, which is a live feed of the Mentos intern, Trevor, broadcast from his office at Mentos headquarters 24/7. The unique part of mentosintern.com is that anyone can send Trevor tasks to complete during his 40-hour work week. If the task is accepted, you can watch it in real time as he carries it out. One of the tasks I have seen involved Trevor calling a person’s brother on the phone and singing him a ballad written moments before. Another task was to create a paper doll style show.

There is also a chat section where people can communicate with Trevor as he is carrying out his tasks. By the looks of it, people spend an incredible amount of time logged in to the chat. Likewise, I have found myself strangely addicted to waiting to see what Trevor does next. I have not yet seen Trevor actually eat a Mento, but he has mentioned that there were flavors of which he was unaware. This leads me to wonder if all these logged-in chatters are popping Mentos as they watch or just giving into their voyeuristic tendencies like I am.

This latest Mentos viral creation comes off the heels of the Mentos/Diet Coke phenomenon. The greatest difference there is that people actually had to buy the product to take part in the action. Another key difference is that I don’t believe Mentos (or Diet Coke for that matter) had any hand in starting the soda spewing craze. My understanding is that it started as a science experiment on a local TV morning show. But no matter how it started, it moved product. Granted, whatever spike in sales they saw has probably dwindled now, but the same can be said for any successful paid campaign. And even if Mentos and Diet Coke did plan that whole thing from the beginning, there were countless unpaid versions created as well, including prominent television appearances (Mythbusters dedicated an entire episode to it).

As for Trevor the Intern, I’m sure I will continue to check in on him from time to time. I have tried to send in a task request, but can’t seem to get the form to work in either Safari or Firefox. I may have to just give him a call.