Cap'n Crunch
Cap’n Crunch
HUGE | Social Copywriting, Lyrical Styles, Nautical Tomfoolery
Tell the roof of your mouth we said hello.
Slinging Sea Shanties in 140 Characters.
Come closer, children, and let me spin you a yarn about the twenty-teens.
There was an era – in the before time, in the long long ago – when social was off the map for brands. A confounding, worrisome, here-be-monsters swath of uncharted Internet where only the brave or foolhardy dared venture.
Cap'n (or was it Commander?) Horatio Magellan Crunch was just the man for the job. With some help from his crew at HUGE, the capricious Cap'n turned into a terror of the Twitter main. Joking, snarking, and freestyling his way from one encounter to the next, he added thousands of Twitter followers, branched out into Instagram, befriended legends like Chrissy Teigen and Questlove, hosted his own YouTube talk show, and wound up defending his honor (and his rank) to Stephen Colbert. These antics boosted the brand's online presence immensely, won several awards, and were the most fun a social team has ever had.
Sure, Wendy’s owns this turf now – but where do you think they learned it from? I’ll just say this: the sea is a harsh mistress. When you come for a Cap’n, come correct.
Crunchgate
In 2013, an astute Redditor noticed that the Cap'n wore insufficient stripes on his uniform. The social team stoked the resulting "scandal," little suspecting that it would (somehow) make the national news.
"Crunchgate" took the Internet... not by storm, exactly. Still, it lowered the barometric pressure for a few days as Gawker, BuzzFeed, CNN, the Daily Mail, the US Navy, and more rushed to discredit or defend Horatio. Even Stephen Colbert weighed in. The Cap'n defended himself in a press conference written and produced over a stressful weekend. Dust settled with the dignity of rank maintained, and naysayers thoroughly Crunchatized. Brand interactions soared, and the team picked up some trophy hardware for their agile handling of the crisis.
Awards are fun and everything, but if you ask me, the highlight of this account was writing some rhymes for the late, great, Biz Markie.
It’s true, kids. Social was a weird place – even magical in its way.