My friend Siri sent along word that Blurb.com was running Killed Ideas, a book that was seeking submissions of the best ideas that never saw the light of day. She thought that I might have something in the ‘ol archives that just might be worth submitting. Was she ever right. Enter Pop Secret Mountain.
If you just followed the link to see what exactly Pop Secret Mountain was all about, then no doubt you have returned with questions. Why would anyone create a site around popcorn? Why is there a cat in a pirate costume? Did people actually use that ringtone? Before we get to all of that, let’s just start at the beginning.
Once upon a time there was Your Media Coverage, which loosely speaking was a group of friends who made off the wall stuff. Your Media Coverage started life way back in 1996 and over the years adapted to our various interests. One of those interests was creative commercials. Along with Siri and a group of MBA’s we created some faux spots for Landmark Winery for an advertising class (#1, #2, #3, #4). We had such fun with those, we made a series of spots for Toyota and CurrentTV (#1, #2, #3, #4). They were good enough that NHK flew a documentary crew out from Japan to interview us and document us working on the “Digging for Oil” spot, which was later featured in the documentary, shown nationwide in Japan. We thought cool, we’re not making a dime off any of this, but hey, lets push the envelope.
Enter CurrentTV and the General Mills Pop Secret brand (at least at the time; the Pop Secret brand was sold to Diamond Foods in 2008). They were going to do another VCam (loosely a user generated advertisement) with Pop Secret as the star. Generally speaking, we never wasted resources on brands we didn’t like; since we liked Pop Secret, we decided lets see what we can do. Upon which we generated 10 spots in the span of a week. Total cost: about $100 bucks worth of popcorn. Fun factor, very high.
The problem was when the VCam came out, it was restrictive to the point of absurdity; our creative vision was about to get crushed and our little spots would never see the light of day. Instead of that occurring, we went with option B: create our own site and see if we can’t turn some heads. Hence, Pop Secret Mountain was born. No support from General Mills or anyone for that matter. Five guys, their friends, and well, a crazy idea.
At first, it became just a showcase for what we had. The live action spots ranged from zombie roommates to popcorn showdowns. When Kaptain Kat was created by David Steele, the series of rather crazy cartoons that had Pop Secret popcorn in them begin push the envelope even farther. Kaptain Kat would take on a mind of his own, and unfortunately the 22 minute short never came to be, but it was great fun putting it together. But once Kaptain Kat was on the scene, we started expanding: we added ringtones, wallpapers, and MySpace buttons. All of the sudden, we had 50K worth of unique users in a month and we could see lots of visits from General Mills (and their lawyers no doubt).
Sensing the end via large corporate legal department, it was at this point we went for broke: we sent out emails to all the big advertising blogs to see if anyone would buy into it. What proceeded to happen was nothing short of hilarious; Adfreak, Adland, and Adrants all picked up the story and basically reamed us for being “blatantly corporate” and told us to “grow up.” Needless to say, we got a very big kick out of the coverage.
To your questions! Why was there a pirate cat? Because we though it was funny. Did people download the ringtones? Yes, around 150 times if I recall. Why did you create a site around Pop Secret popcorn? Because we actually loved the brand, and because it was just down right fun.
In the end, we never got a take down notice from General Mills, Pop Secret Mountain was at the top of many Google searches for Pop Secret (outpacing the CurrentTV VCam result, which we were proud of), and we all moved on to other creative things. We never made a penny on the site or the creative ads we did, and by no means as everyone believed did General Mills put us up to it. But of all the killed ideas we had, Pop Secret Mountain was by far one of the craziest. Working with James Duvall, David Steele, Josh Blagg and a host of other friends on Pop Secret Mountain (and other crazy film and media related things we did) is a memory I’ll cherish for a long time.
Given it’s return to the web, I’ll leave Pop Secret Mountain up for a while if anyone wants to see it; it just might make the book (which would be a testament to creativity in my opinion). If you have a killed idea you think might be worth seeing the light of day, there’s still about a day left to submit at Killed Ideas.