Baring one's very
soul on Fifth Avenue
Passersby are invited to share their life dreams
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 29, 2010
It's near dusk in Manhattan, and on the corner of 5th Avenue and 43rd Street people are clustered in front of a store window. Nothing unusual about that, particularly on Fifth Avenue. But they are not looking at the latest fashions.
On display in the window is what looks like a giant keyboard on a TV screen. In huge black letters over the screen is the question, "What do you want to do before you die?"
Someone is tapping their fingers on the window, as if they were typing, and indeed they are. They are typing on a touch-sensitive screen, and shortly after they do so their letters and words appear on the big screen.
As one person finishes answering the question, another steps up to the screen and begins typing, then another.
Looking at the screen one sees a long scroll of their answers.
Some are outrageous.
"Make People's 100 sexiest list." "Kiss Taylor Lautner." "Skydive!!! ... nude." "Have a pet whale."
Some are sweet.
"Spend my life with the girl of my dreams, Erica Conway." "Build a home for the homeless." "Be a father."
Some are simply heartbreaking.
"I want to find my mom missing for 6 yrs. from Fort Worth Texas please."
They're all part of an alternative media campaign to promote MTV's new show "The Buried Life," in which four guys go across the country doing the 100 things they've vowed to do before they died, and helping others do they same.
The campaign is the creation of agency Maude working with Monster Media, an alternative media company. The idea was to get people on the street to engage with the show, and what better way could there be than inviting them to share their lists of must-do things?
"One of the things we discuss with our clients is being topical and almost personal on the advertising side, willing people to put out some of their thoughts and emotions," says John Payne, president of Monster Media in Orlando, Fla.
"This seemed to be the perfect show for it, to talk about the buried life, what people privately or publicly are wishing to do before kicking the bucket."
The display is pretty simple. There are several screens on the storefront. One screen plays clips from the show.
Another larger screen scrolls the answers from people on the street. Then there's a touch-sensitive digital screen where passersby can type in something off their list.
Each submission goes through a filter, so that nothing obscene gets added to the display. If it's clean, the item pops up on the larger screen, along with the person's name and hometown. Users can also post their item to their personal Facebook accounts via a simple interface.
The display went up in mid January and will stay up through this weekend. So far, more than 11,000 wishes have been uploaded, and they're also running on a feed to the MTV web site.
"People are willing to stand in line in cold weather to put what they want to do and load it on Facebook," Payne says.
The stunt works because it really engages people. The idea is directly connected to the concept of the show, and it gets people thinking about more than just advertising. They're thinking about their lives.
As a bonus, the campaign has gotten a second life online what with all the Facebook updates and people taking pictures with their cell phones when their wish scrolls up on the board. They then post those pictures to other social media accounts, spreading the word about "Buried" far beyond New York.
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