As you may or may not know, Donnie Hoyle, the tutorial voice of “You Suck at Photoshop,” is not a “real” person. And if you haven’t seen the crude but useful Photoshop videos you can find them here. They were the brain child of Creative Director Troy Hitch (and team?) and were in fact not used to advertise for Adobe Photoshop products but to indirectly advertise Big Fat Institute’s own ingenuity.
In an interview on NPR’s Pop Culture podcast Troy explained that they are “not out to sell something for a client…but to change people’s perception about their brand and to put people in a state of mind in which they’ll be more likely to buy their product.” Read this Time article to learn more about this project and the masterminds behind it.
“You Suck at Photoshop” is a word of mouth marketing success story. I learned about it from more than one friend, and have shared it with many others. People have discovered Donnie on Facebook.com and about “50 thousand people in four hours” showed up on ebay.com to talk to him through the “ask sellers questions” email feature while he was selling his wedding ring (for reference watch, “You Suck at Photoshop episode 3.”)
What a success!
