Critical Mass PR

I really dig this Aha campaign from insurance and financial services purveyor Mutual of Omaha - all the way down to the “Aha” in Omaha. It’s a crowdsourced effort now typical of many brands that want to leverage the creativity and unique stories of customers and fans. During October Mutual and its community of voting followers whittled 75 video entries of people describing their life’s big Aha moment down to 25 finalists and now ten winners who will comprise a series of TV commercials in 2011.

Rock and Roll Guru Joe Heuer is among the big winners and my personal favorite. He describes himself as “a hippie who spews love, joy and appreciation in the spirit of service with abundant sarcasm, all wrapped in rock and roll.” And he applies this positive vibe to books including “The Rock and Roll Guide To Customer Loyalty” and uplifting speaking engagements for a long list of corporations, associations and charitable organizations. He walks the talk too, taking in as many rock concerts as possible when home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and while traveling the speaking circuit. I first learned of Heuer on Twitter and have become a big fan of his post-concert reviews on YouTube.

Heuer’s Aha moment (which you can view here) happened where everybody’s should as far as I’m concerned, at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. He tells me he found himself focused on the image of John Lennon during a visit to the Beatles exhibit in January 2008. Some 15 minutes of “imagining” later he had it, he’d direct all of his energy into being the Rock & Roll Guru and season his passion for music into all of his work going forward. “This is not a gig, it’s who I’ve always been,” explains Joe, and trusting himself to fully integrate his philosophy into his professional life was his specific Aha Moment.

Heuer is working on a “Rock & Roll Philosophy” minute for radio syndication and plans a book about his Aha experience. News of his selection for the Mutual ads and a call from Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame CEO Terry Stewart to congratulate him seem to indicate Heuer is living his rock n’ roll fantasy.

Mutual Benefits

Heuer isn’t the only one who scores here. Mutual of Omaha is succeeding with a crowdsource commercial format that is becoming pretty standard fare, so creativity is key. The Aha spots work for their simplicity, uniqueness and brevity. Just talking heads in front of a gray backdrop, yet this really lets the winners’ stories shine through. The clips clock in at just 30 seconds each, including Mutual’s “proud sponsor of life’s aha moments” tag, which works well for sharing across social networks while Mutual’s message tags along.

The winning video clips, and all the entries, are fairly well representative of various regions across the U.S. and each features a participant’s unique situation to aid mass appeal for the campaign, again allowing Mutual to earn awareness in many places, perhaps even some it hasn’t reached before. An Aha bus tour kicked the campaign off taking a custom 34-foot mobile studio around the country to help capture people’s stories and a Facebook page continues growing a community of fans who may find they’d like to be Mutual clients someday.

Not a bad little road trip, huh?