Flat Eric (Sta-Prest)
Levi's Sta-Prest1999
Flat Eric (Sta-Prest) is a 1999 television campaign (three spots) for Levi's Sta-Prest, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London.
The line
Sta-Prest. One crease. Always.
Why it works
A scruffy yellow glove puppet nodding to a techno bassline in a beat-up American car sold sharply creased trousers — and nobody could explain why it worked, including the research, which said it wouldn't. BBH aired it anyway in January 1999. Flat Eric became an instant cult: fan sites, merchandise demands, and a soundtrack — Mr Oizo's "Flat Beat" — that went to No. 1 in the UK singles chart on the puppet's popularity alone, outselling its nearest rival two to one. It is studied as a pure case of attitude transfer (the puppet's unexplained cool becoming the product's), of advertising driving the pop charts rather than borrowing from them, and of the limits of pre-testing against genuinely strange ideas.
Techniques
- Mascots and characters A scruffy yellow puppet nodding along in a beat-up American car becomes a cult character whose unexplained cool rubs off on the trousers.
- Jingles and music Sets the puppet to a techno bassline that goes on to top the UK singles chart, making the music inseparable from the campaign.
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