The Marketing of Zac Sunderland: Part 1

Praxis Universal is an Internet video and social network marketing company. We specialize in online marketing using the vast spheres of social networks to help people get their message out. We tend to work principally in the boating industry, our primary area of interest, but by no means is that our sole area of production. We’ve done some work with environmental groups and in the nonprofit arena as well.

Last year we worked with Zac Sunderland, marketing his attempt to sail around the world by way of Internet social networking and video. Marketing via the Internet is not necessarily new but our style of aggressive social networking is. Praxis Universal is a boutique video marketing company.
We aren’t a big company, and that allows us to work very closely with our clients. Marketing in the social spheres is personal and calls for a closer relationship between us and our client than would be found in a larger production marketing agency. Because of our limited clientele we can react very quickly, as one must when working in the dynamic online social world.

In the course of working with Zac, we were able to help raise several hundred thousand dollars and create an awareness of Zac throughout the world. We did this using video, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and many other more topic specific networks. We aggressively worked with numerous major newspapers, magazines, and TV networks.

Many people will have heard of Zac Sunderland. If not, do an Internet search and you’ll quickly find out all about him. You can also go to PraxisUniversal.com, and you’ll see the videos that promoted his around the world attempt.

This isn’t an article about Zac Sunderland, but a study in a marketing endeavor.

Zac

In May of 2008, Zac Sunderland, a 16 year old from Thousand Oaks, California, set off to sail around the world alone. 13 months later he returned at 17 years old the youngest person ever to sail around the world single handed. In the process he became an internationally known figure, a huge Internet personality with videos and articles everywhere online, in print, and on television.

The Family

The Sunderlands didn’t have the money to finance the trip and in a conversation with them we decided to donate about $10,000 worth of marketing and video work to his attempt. This included a five minute video (the original promotional video) and our Internet marketing skills. (As well we spent weeks working on the boat right up until he very minute he left.) Later on we would come to work on the project in various positions.

Initially we wanted to see how the general public was going to react to this venture so we ran a survey to see what the public’s general feeling was going to be about a 16 year old trying to sail around the world alone.

There were many remarks of the obvious sort, family using their child for personal gain, for publicity, living through their child, questions about their religious beliefs and how it impacted the decisions being made a lot of skepticism and some questions about the sanity of the parents letting a child attempt such thing. Among professional boaters there were many questions as to his skill level and the boat. It also brought up questions about the whole “youngest record” attempts.


Working to Promote Zac

In the seven months we worked on this project, we spent a majority of our time putting together footage for stories, at times driving hundreds of miles to get footage to various news agencies before their deadlines so they would cover Zac and his adventure. It was amazing how few of the major networks had good computer skills or downloading capabilities, and we spent many weeks working with them to put the footage together in useable packages.

But in the end, Zac would become one of the most recognized figures of 2009.

As is always the case in situation like this there were many empty promises and little follow through. Our primary job was to keep building a buzz around the project and keep the interest of the general public. Well after Zac had left and all the excitement died down we were hired by the family to keep the project relevant and interesting. We did this via videos about the trip and by working in the social networking spheres, and supplying edited footage to the various shows that wanted to pieces on Zac.

Since the trip had its share of controversy we circumvented many of the potential marketing pitfalls by supplying and editing the footage used in the various news and human interest pieces and by working closely with the networks and multitudes of other agencies around the world to make sure that Zac and the family were seen in a positive light.

This took up the majority of our time. In contributing to dozens of shows we only had one news agency get upset with us. They were a news/ human interest show in Australia with a mailing address on their website that was in Los Angeles which was where we had raced to one Friday afternoon to get the film to their Los Angeles affiliate with the intention of their being able to upload the footage for the show from there the following Monday. Unfortunately it was an old address so they never got the footage, though someone did received a nicely edited package of exclusive Zac footage from somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Media Work

We put out some feelers online and talked to the family about making calls to various local media to see if anyone else would do a story. Then we got to work outlining a promotional video for “Zac’s World Adventure.”

Soon, a fairly large local newspaper, the “Ventura County Star,” picked up the story. The article went well, and the tone was positive. Next the story was picked up by the local ABC affiliate in Los Angeles a very big market. Soon after that story went national and the requests for interviews exploded.
In these circumstances, timing is everything and luck plays a big part in the success of things like this. It was a slow media year and there was a need for a feel good story - this being the beginning of the economic downturn and all the anti U.S. rhetoric in the world. So a young man from the U.S. going out to do something very much in the line of our American spirit of adventure was perfectly timed.


Internet Audience

It was really in the Internet realm that the story took off. With the help of our videos, social sites and blogging, Zac found a following. The interactivity of the Internet allowed people to voice their opinions and concerns and discuss the various aspects of the trip. Many of the discussion boards were quite in depth with discussions about routing, weather, places visited, and sailing in general. Some schools were using the trip for educational purpose and we even made a video for a French Canadian school to be used for teaching English. We encouraged all this by interacting in the various social spheres answering questions and starting discussion boards. Considering that there were thousands of people commenting on dozens of sites at any one time it was a full-time job just keeping on top of it.


For the family blogging, became their connection to his audience - it is one of the most important aspects of any good website. It allowed the family to answer questions and set the tone for the other sites following along with Zac and helped to keep interest going in the trip. For the family it was even more important as they were attempting to make a documentary and to do that they had to continually validate the attempt.

Blogging, particularly in the case of a controversial attempt like this, can be a two edged sword. It is easy to get your back up when people are looking closely at things you may feel are private. But as the family was asking for public and sponsors dollars, it can be damaging to not address the negative as well as positive questions. If you decide to make your living in this manner then you become a public figure and a lot of the rights to privacy don’t apply.




The Promo Video





Initially we opened conversations on various blog and social sites to generate awareness. Many news agencies find their ideas via this venue.

One of our major concerns was the controversial nature of the trip - dropping out of school, safety issues, age issues.
Because of all the controversy we took a statement that Zac had made to us on film and made that the focal point of the trip, “I want to have big adventure.” We down played the record attempt and focused on Zac sailing around the world meeting people, stopping regularly. It was to be an extremely adventurous trip, but one filled with personal growth and learning. Thankfully it was all that and though there were a few problems the reality is it was a fairly uneventful trip- as far as any ‘Around The World Alone’ trip can be. There were no pirates, no bad storms, and if anything, the biggest problems came from the inexperience at being sixteen years old.

Once we had what we felt was enough footage we start the process of organizing the footage and what the various messages of the video would be.
Our style may seem a little backward to many but when we are working in a reality based mode our process is very organic. We go through our footage, time coding it and really just let what we saw sink in, usually throw out ideas while we’re looking at the footage, seeing how the needs of the client will match up with the footage and our general idea of what were wanting to create.

We had some very specific goals in mind for this video. We wanted people to form an attachment to Zac as a person. We wanted to show his youth and his willingness to do the hard work, and his boating skills. At the same time it was important to show that he was dedicated to this goal and was aware of the difficulties involved. We need to show that his boat was being prepared properly. Then we had to resolve the question of “what kind of parents would let their kid do something so dangerous?”

Primarily though we were asking people to donate to the cause. We had several conversations with the parents about how their website was set up, it was a bit of a mess, and we want to make sure that once the video came out that it would be easily accessible to potential sponsors and that they would be available constantly- usually you only get one chance at a potential sponsor.

The process of laying out a video promotional project varies depending on the goals, footage available, and desires of the client. In this case we had a free hand on the project.
We opened with some sailing footage to set the tone and let people orient on what this was about. Then we decided to start with a bold statement of fact and a quick explanation from Zac on what he was about. “My name is Zac Sunderland and I am going to be the youngest man to sail around the world alone.” On a sub note, we wanted to push the concept of his having a great adventure, to personalize it.

We then introduced the parents and it was very important to present a very positive competent image to the public. We also included some shots of Zac being interviewed by a major network to legitimize his venture in the eyes of the public.

In this case we used no narration and just let the family describe themselves. Critical in making a reality based video is not to be to heavy handed- it’s ok to leave some the Uhhs and Umms but we did have to spend an awful lot of time reconstructing sentences and of course all the matching of images to narration.

It was a difficult video and in our final push in the studio we spent about 10 hours just trying to get everything right- even waiting for permission for one of the musicians to use the music. Copyrights are extremely important!

Up until we finished we were really unsure about the video and getting extremely frustrated, finally we stopped and just sat back and watched it. We were very pleased with the first video I think it was one of those projects where you just nail it.
But it isn’t just about making a video and sticking it on a website, making the video is only the first step. Once we had the family’s approval we blasted it all over the web, paying particular interest to the boating industry because that is where we figured we could get Zac the most support. It worked better than we ever dreamed. The one video, and the Internet marketing that went with it launched Zac’s dream, and his world record attempt is now in the record books.