Wieden+kennedy: MOTHER BUCKER

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: WIEDEN+KENNEDY AMSTERDAM
Agency: WIEDEN+KENNEDY AMSTERDAM
Category: Corporate Image & Information
Creative Director: Alvaro Sotomayor (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Business Affairs: Barrie Williams (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Director: Ben Sandler (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Director Of Photography: Camille Herren
Business Affairs: Emilie Douque (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Executive Creative Director: Eric Quennoy (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Jess Hall (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Music Supervisor: Kate Young (Soho Music)
Executive Producer: Jelani Issaacs
Executive Creative Director: Mark Bernath (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Art Production: Paul de Bruin (Cineset Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Cara To (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Editor: Jordi Luna (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Ben Sandler (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Ella de Weijer (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Jordi Luna (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
Project Manager/Agency Producer: Judd Caraway (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)
The Kennedys: Thomas Payne (Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam)

Outcome
In just 4 hours over 100 Mother Buckers rode Santa’s lap while 17,688 viewers tuned in to watch the carnage live on Ustream. The Champion Mother Bucker managed to stay on crazy Santa’s lap for an epic 2.22 minutes, which equated to a €2,220 donation. And thanks to the partially naked champion's encore ride, we also added a Shirtless Bonus bringing the grand total to €3,000! As a result we donated €1,500 to Human Rights Watch, and €1,500 to Planète Enfant.

Client Brief Or Objective
Following in our tradition of elevating the Christmas card concept to an event, this season we bucked the ultimate ride, right from Santa’s lap, for entertainment, and most importantly, for charity. We really wanted to push the creative aspect while also providing a bit of office revelry and something that would make people laugh during the holiday season. If you can’t laugh at and with your friends and coworkers, it’s just not Christmas. And it was pretty damn hilarious.

Relevancy
Badass giant Santa was an unexpected way to bring our agency colleagues together for a unique festive challenge, combining the nostalgia for Santa’s lap with the entertaining physical and visual feast of the bucking bronco. And we wanted to get people to compete for a good cause. The agency Christmas Card is often overly self-promotional or just plain wasteful. Surely a mechanical bull hidden in Santa’s right thigh is more useful to society. Especially one that raises money for charity.

Implementation
We built a giant Santa, with a mechanical bull hidden in his lap. We then challenged the agency to ride Santa's lap for as long as they could, to raise money for charity. The longer they rode, the more cash went to charity (donation formula: time-clock number of the winning ride, multiplied by 1,000). We gave out numbers to a bunch of W+K family and friends that corresponded to the people who rode. If you got the number of the person who rode the longest - the Champion Mother Bucker - then you got to pick where the charitable donation went.