On the heels of his massive out-of-home campaign, OUTFRONT Media recently caught up with the ‘Fat Jew’ (real name Josh Ostrovsky) to chat social media, advertising and everything in between.
You may know him as the internet phenomenon, social media mogul and all around millennial pop cultural figure. If anyone knows how to catch people’s attention, it’s the Fat Jew. Having attracted a massive following -- 9.4M on Instagram and 270K on Twitter -- by creating and sharing content millennials love, he’s become an expert on how to engage this demographic. In doing so, he’s successfully undertaken what advertisers continue to grapple with in the face of a new generation of consumers.
When he’s not planning the second annual National Rosé Day or tending to his many business ventures, the Fat Jew is taking note of how brand and celebs like Drake use out-of-home advertising campaigns to organically drive social buzz.
We quizzed him on his favorite campaigns, how social is changing the ad game and how being an influencer has informed his own brand’s tactics.
OUTFRONT: Favorite current or past subway ad campaign?
Fat Jew: Dr. Zizmor, that dude is a legend. He did not age very well, especially for a skin doctor. He ended up looking like s--t, but he just kept it consistent. Same thing with ‘Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar’ - Dan Smith is a f--king legend. Those guys who kept it consistent and didn’t try and chase trends.
How do you think out-of-home (OOH) is changing advertising in our social-media obsessed world?
The whole White Girl Rose movement was founded from social media but, we’re like, huge fans of out-of-home. We talk about the URL of internet and the IRL - “in real life” - they’re all kind of blending into one. We just meme’d a man into the presidency, the internet and the world are just one f--king huge giant weird thing now. They are pretty much intertwined. You know there is a lot of noise on the internet. Basically everything we do is designed to be photographed - our can, our bottle, me in the used Versace speedo with the bottle with the long straw drinking. We try to create out-of-home that people are going to take pictures of, which is not f--king easy. It’s not easy to get someone to get out of their car or look up and stop.
How does out-of-home (OOH) play into the phenomenon of earned media?
How do you make everyone start talking about some s--t online that’s in the real world, that is also an advertisement? It’s tricky, but we put up a billboard on the way to Coachella last year: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Wear Flower Crowns.” It was an ad for ‘White Girl Rose,’. And people were stopping on the f--king side of the road, getting out of their car - probably girls named Rachel and Lauren in flower crowns - getting out and taking photos of that billboard and trying to take selfies of themselves with the billboard in the background.
Our entire marketing plan at the company is that - we basically give people content to put on their social media channels and in return they put it up and they market our f--king products for us. We give them f--king ridiculously awesome shit, thrones made of rose bottles, Jacuzzis full of rose to sit in at our parties, and our advertising - and even the product themselves - everything is designed as content to put on your channels for you to then market for us online. So it’s a real mix of things you can physically touch and also things you can put on your social media channels.
Gotta love simple creative that gets people talking - after all, that’s what the Fat Jew is all about.
