A press release that hit the wires on November 12 revealed that ad agency Stun Creative is the brains behind a viral video that’s been circulating on a “product” that turns your iPhone into a stun gun.
The video touts various demonstrations, as explained by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, “Jeff Esteghlalian,” who had invented an accessory to the iPhone that transforms it into a low-grade stun weapon.
“Jeff” shows how the device works on a friend, a black belt karate master, and how a woman effectively uses the device on her cheating boyfriend.
The video, made to look like it was created at the hands of an amateur, garnered 109,114 views on YouTube alone within a short period of time (about a week).
The press release said it garnered global attention, from news organizations in Germany, Russia, Japan, Korea and Israel.
CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, Creativity Magazine and the Los Angeles Times had also written about the questionable product, wondering (not too hard I hope) on whether it was legit or not.
Stun Creative founders Mark Feldstein and Brad Roth created the fake demo in an effort to self-promote their agency—hence the product name being called “Stun Fone.”
“We implemented this campaign solely to illustrate the power of a great idea,” said Roth in a statement. “In today’s universe, you don’t have to be heavily funded to present a new idea through social media; you just need to be highly inventive. In less than one week, we’ve actually received over 20,000 requests for orders for the ‘Stun Fone’ product from every corner of the globe.”
Feldstein also said: “It all started from a single YouTube posting. In creating the video, we deliberately combined two elements guaranteed to get attention online – a comedic ‘Jackass’-style prank and the promise of a wildly new iPhone technology. We’re always being asked to develop and craft marketing campaigns on behalf of our clients…so we thought this time it would be fun if we did one for ourselves.”
