Lion Man of Tazania

A little while ago I wrote about the a new partly-viral advertisement that went by the name of the “Lion Man of Tanzania”. Well, I think the campaign has run its course, but we still don’t know very much about it.

• A man was captured in Tanzania, who was raised by lions
• He’s being kept in Montreal, and researchers have concluded there is no hope of communicating with him or integrating him back into society
• He sees a blue car out the window and escapes, driving away to some unknown place
• That car is the new 2008 Ford Focus

Now that’s all I know up to this point, unless there is another chapter to this saga.

The interesting thing about this series of commercials is that the supposed viral parts (the ads on Canoe and Toronto Star and elsewhere) never completed the story. If you simply watched the Internet and never watched television, you would miss part of the point of the ads. I think the online ads only ran for a couple of days even, which was surprising.

Even the TV commercials weren’t very clear what kind of car it was. In the comments to my last post, I heard it was a Saturn, and somebody else thought it was  a Ford Fusion.

All in all, it was an interesting experiment. It makes me wonder what the great vision was supposed to be, and if that vision was fully realized or if something happened along the way to ruin that dream. I can imagine parts of the plan being changed at the last moment, or based on the lack of success of the online viral component there might have been a change of heart that made the agency want to focus on the television commercials exclusively.

Anyways, I look forward to the next viral campaign. If anyone notices an interesting one, please let me know in the comments. This side of advertising is fascinating to me.