Interested in creative campaigns? Check out our Ad of the Day section and sign up for our Ads of the Week newsletter so you don’t miss a story.András was born in 1945, in Kőszeg Part of the then Kingdom of Hungary. The only difference is that in the internet age anybody can be a meme.” In ancient times, people told jokes in the pub and caricatures were printed in newspapers. But in reality, it’s as old as humanity – only the media has changed. His thoughts on meme culture? “Memes are a relatively new phenomenon. “It’s an unusual career to start as an engineer and end as a meme guy,” he reflects. “He can make a bigger impact because he’s famous for being himself.”Īrató stays tight-lipped on what the future holds in the advertising world for him, but that grinning face says it all – there are projects in the works. “We were thinking about iconic smiles that we could use for the commercial and Andras’s was the first and the only one that we wanted,” adds Pietro Borghi, account executive at We Are Social. Audiences can relate to it, plus it’s funny. The Vodafone ad works because it stays true to what ‘Harold’ is known for. Internet culture has been trickling its way into brand campaigns over the years, with some ads getting it really right and others coming off as cheesy – the latter will be called out online. “It’s an exciting challenge for me because I’ve never appeared in a global campaign before, only nationwide,” he notes. He has since starred in a Coca-Cola ad in Hungary, an Enzo spot in Brazil and most recently a tongue-in-cheek campaign by Vodafone Italy and creative agency We Are Social. This change in mindset began bringing a lot more commercial opportunities Arató’s way. Once I embraced it, like yes this is me, we wanted to make it more positive,” he says, adding that he has now been with his Hungarian talent manager for five years. “We are working hard to create a positive image behind the face because in the beginning there were rude and disgusting memes. Initially believing that all media interest could be handled by him personally from his home computer in Budapest, he soon realized that it was a much greater job than anticipated – everyone wanted a piece of him. Needing to make the situation more positive (and profitable), he devised a plan to take advantage of his notoriety. Arató initially didn’t “see a penny” from his viral status. With fame comes money, right? Well, not necessarily in the internet age. I’m a human being, I’m a living person and since then it has been unstoppable.” “But then I said to myself, now that a brand has been built around me, I would be foolish not to use it.” It was at this point that he revealed his true identity to the world and began embracing his newfound fame. “It took me about five years to accept the situation,” he notes. People gravitated toward his grinning face, which was seemingly unperturbed by any dire circumstances he found himself in. Then 67 years old, Arató’s look took the web by storm in the form of gifs, images and videos. I wanted to stop it and erase all my pictures, but I realized that this wasn’t possible.” After a quick Google reverse image search one day, the engineer was shocked to discover that someone in America had picked up his photos, turned them into memes and unleashed them online. “In the course of two years, took several hundred photos and uploaded them to a stock photo website,” says Arató.
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