Even though I’ll always cheer for Team Survivorman, I will admit that Bear Grylls has some impressive credentials and can be quite entertaining. What has been the most entertaining was watching the “Better drink my own piss” meme grow in popularity. The meme consists of captioning a picture of Bear Grylls with a random statement followed by “Better drink my own piss,” which is a reference to Episode 13 of Man vs. Wild where he actually drank his own piss. Ick.
There have been many hilarious iterations, and Bear even got in on the fun last spring when he was visiting LA. He posted a tweet that said, “In honour of all your @replies about pee drinking. am on vacation in LA. Looks like I’ll have to drink my own pee!” accompanied with a picture of himself grimacing while sipping from a teacup. Completely enamored by his shout out, Reddit users tried to get him to do an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) thread, which is when an individual answers (almost) any question asked by the Reddit community. The AMA Request had gone unanswered… until one fateful Tuesday afternoon in September.
As the current face of Degree Men, this proved to be a perfect opportunity to cash in on Bear’s internet notoriety. A little over 4 months after the original AMA Request was submitted, Bear answered Redditors’ questions via videos posted to Degree Men’s YouTube channel. While it’s not as creatively impressive as the Old Spice Guy’s video responses, Degree Men is getting eyes on their branded channel and reinforcing Bear’s connection to the brand. By keeping the branding out of the actual videos, I’m sure other viewers, like me, are much more likely to keep coming back to watch his responses. In fact, I even found myself feeling grateful to Degree Men for getting Bear to do an AMA.
While Bear’s videos probably won’t hit the millions of views that the Old Spice Guy got, the campaign has managed to captivate the reddit audience. And I’m willing to bet that a majority of the Reddit audience falls right into the target demographic for Degree Men. I think this is a great example of an agency understanding the delicate balance between providing entertainment and reinforcing brand recognition. And it’s nice to see a side of Bear that isn’t so EXTREME.
On a side note, he did not mention his own piss when answering the question, “What is the least favorite thing you’ve eaten?” *shudder*