My SuperProposal's JP Featured on 'Entertainment Tonight'

Our anonymous and mysterious groom-to-be 'JP' was featured on a segment of Entertainment Tonight (click to play video) last night. He appeared a bit nervous from what I could tell from his mannerisms and I wish that they hadn't shown so much of him. I would have preferred just a sit down shot with his face darkened out and voice altered. ET had shots of him walking (neck down) and from behind so I'm hoping that people wont try guessing who he is. At least they didn't make him sound like a South Park character with a high squeaky voice and made him sound more manly with a low guttural alteration...lol.

So I'd like to clarify a few things to any reporters who read my blog for details. There has been a lot of mis-information printed out there about several possible identifying traits or characteristics about JP.

Location

Its been reported that JP is from Nashville, Illinois/Wisconsin area, 'A West Coast Man' and 'from Southern CA'. OK, reporters and disc jockey's - pay attention - I am the one from Southern CA. Just because the website contact information lists me in Southern CA, Jamie O'Donnell in Northern CA and Greg Jarboe from Boston doesn't necessarily mean that JP hails from these areas. We are the media and adverting contacts who have been helping JP in his quest so please take the time to read the posts more carefully when trying to pinpoint and then go printing it.

The Official answer that we have constantly given out is:

JP is from the 'lower 48 States'.

Age

I've seen in print that JP has an age range listed anywhere from 'A 21 Year Old Man' to 'A Man in his Mid Thirties'.

All we have ever stated is:

JP is between the ages of 25 and 35.

Occupation

I've read blogs and online newspaper reports that indicate that JP is an 'Internet Entrepreneur', a 'Web Developer' or in the 'Internet industry'.

Funny because our official statement is:

JP is Internet Savvy. No occupation given.

I understand that CBS wants to put out a series of clues leading up to the game, we don't know what were going to come up with yet if we do that because it is still very important for us to maintain anonymity right up until the game.

Seriously though, with all of the attempts at his identity, its amazing that his girlfriend still has not found out.

Wish us luck.

Who is 'JP' from My Super Proposal?

I'm receiving a LOT of mail, phone calls and press calls about my involvment with MySuperProposal.com. To give a little bit of information on how this has changed my day to day routine, one must know that being listed as one of the contact persons for JP, especially after a live interview or the Good Morning America Show - creates a flood of phone calls and emails with requests for more media interviews (I spoke to 8 reporters or newscasters yesterday), companies wanting me to push their creative or sometimes kooky idea, sponsors interested in giving JP everything from a diamond to a honeymoon to spa treatments for his future fiance. I've taken phone calls ranging from 4:00 in the morning until midnight, and I estimated yesterday that since January 1st, I'm averaging 16 hours a day on the project. The battery on my cordless office line and the 2 batteries for my cell phone constantly seem to be drained and are beeping from a lack of battery power. The emails of course never stop. I've done interviews with reporters from foreign countries wanting 'their countries exclusive'. I've put my whole agency behind this effort (and then some, we actually have 9 people working some sort of angle on this project and not everybody has full knowledge - everything is on a 'need to know' basis) and my business partner Juan Prado is working as many hours on this as I am. Greg Jarboe and Jamie O'Donnell of SEO-PR have been working the phones tirelessly and fielding press and sponsor requests to the team. I haven't shaved in a week.

But the biggest question I constantly receive, the one question I hear over and over in interviews while I'm either silent in the background or participating with JP or asked when dealing with a media producer is:

"Who is JP"?

Yesterday I listened to a radio broadcast after JP had hung up and heard the morning show radio personalities banter back and forth trying to pinpoint what part of the United States JP was from. When asked, he simply responded "Somewhere in the lower 48 states". They analyzed his somewhat disguised voice for accents and also picked apart his statement from carefully crafted questions in order to summise clues as to his whereabouts. Putting all of their clues together, one disk jockey staked his reputation that he was from the Michigan/Wisconson area, while the other was trying to determine whether he heard a Southern twang or not.

We will be shooting a video of her response and immediately upload it online for viewers to see her reaction to the world's first ever proposal during the largest televised event of the year which has prompted several girls to call me, desperately trying to figure out if JP is in fact their boyfriend and if they really should get themselves prepared mentally for the Big Game (forget player preparation - this year the fans are getting prepared!). One girl wanted to know if she should have a suitcase prepared in order to appear on 'Good Morning America' the very next day, since she was so convinced that JP was in fact her boyfriend of many years since he is "creative, over the top, and romantic and this is something he would do". One guy emailed me and sent pictures of he and his girlfriend and wanted to join JP and propose to his girlfriend at the same time. A very large ad agency called me representing one of the current Superbowl advertisers lamenting the fact that they already had commited air time and had spent a small fortune on their ads but perhaps if we weren't able to pull this off, did we want to air a commercial during the Pro Bowl?

More to the question though, we have taken many, many steps in order to protect JP's identity because the surprise would be ruined if she found out. On several occasions his voice has been electronically garbled and his face was blacked out for his Good Morning America segment. He has had many phone interviews at odd hours and when we conduct a phone interview, I have the interviewer dial into a conference call bridge that I arrange in advance so all they get is an 800 number and when that cant be arranged, JP masks his caller ID in order to protect his location. Early on before my involvement, JP told me that on his very first interview, he laid in the back of his vehicle, head upside down with a t-shirt over his head in order to disguise his voice. We've put out some disinformation in order to throw people off as to his location or employment, the domain is listed in an aquaintance's name, the site hosted elsewhere, and in the beginning, an anonymous email account set up. JP's girlfriend wouldn't be able to make the connection between my involvement or the PR guys from SEO-PR since I was the one who brought them in.

Anyway, sorry to be so vague and not answer any specifics and give any clues, but we have to do this in order to add to the mystique and intrigue of this project. I do predict one thing though, I think that among this years single female viewers watching (thinking it might be them being proposed to and in the response video), it will be a very well dressed Superbowl!

Video of 'JP' of MySuperProposal on Good Morning America

The video segment of JP on the Good Morning America Show aired this morning. This link shows that JP is real and unfortunately he sounds like a South Park Character with the way GMA altered his voice in order to keep his identity a secret. Check out our groom to be in his first live television appearance!

MySuperProposal.com to be featured on the Good Morning America Show

I've just confirmed with a Producer for the Good Morning America Show that they will be doing a story on MySuperProposal.com and our quest to go from a blog post to a Superbowl ad. We will be featured this next Wednesday morning 01/10/2007. They have agreed to have JP live on the show but to use a silhouette of him and to also alter his voice so as not to be recognized. JP has already been altering his voice when he does radio interviews.

Thanks for all of your support in our quest to help 'J.P.' propose to his girlfriend during the Superbowl and be sure to tune in to the Good Morning America Show to see their coverage of our little project.

Update: the segment will air during the 8:30 a.m. timeslot of the show. It is live in New York time-wise but taped in all other timezones so that it is at 8:30 in all timezones.

My Super Proposal - Super Bowl Commercial Proposal Update

It's been awhile since my plea to help promote 'J.P.' in his quest for a 30 second commercial spot during next February's Super Bowl game in order to propose to his girlfriend so its time for a long overdue update.

The response has been tremendous.

The intial blogosphere bang was first launched by Danny, Lee, David, Jeremy, Liane and many more and followed up by a press release by Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR. Although we had some initial coverage before my involvement, the combined efforts led to the 'tipping point' - an article written by Abbey Klaassen of AdAge Magazine. The AdAge article led to a flurry of coverage from radio, print and tv inquiries and also a lot of inquiries from potential sponsors and advertisers including 7 diamond ring retailers or manufacturers!

To sum all of the exposure up, here is a list of media and press that has happened to date:

Radio Interviews and Coverage:

Radio Station in Virginia (prior to my involvement - no call station info)
Radio Station in California (prior to my involvement)
107.5 The River, radio station in Nashville
710 KIRO Newsradio The Ron & Don Show, Seattle.
KKND - New Orleans
STAR 94 Radio in Atlanta
Saint Louis morning drive time talk show
Ken and Tammy Show on WOXL in Asheville NC
WRMF South Florida
Howard Stern Show
Daily Search Cast
94.3 FOX Northern Michagan
KROQ Los Angeles Kevin and Bean show

Newpaper and Online Media Coverage:

AdRants
AdJab
AdAge
AdAge Garfield: The Blog
New York Post
Netscape
Media Buyer Planner
MediaPost
MarketingProfs Daily Fix
Entrepreneur.com Blog
Business 2.0 Blog
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
ABC News / ESPN Sports
ESPN - The Magazine
Chicago Tribune
ABC News - GMA

International Media Coverage:

Sweden
Denmark
Norway
Mexico
Spain

Television Coverage:

Fox News (National - on a Sunday afternoon)
MSNBC (Tomorrow morning 7:30 a.m. PST)
Good Morning America (multiple video segment starting next week)

We've also had inquiries but haven't done interviews with NPR Radio, USA Today, Inside Edition, Rocky Mountain News and a few others.

My initial goal was to show Madison Avenue how a few bloggers could help to get the word out and hopefully give this project some legs. I'm now getting emails from people outside of my industry who've learned of my involvement and are sending well wishes and in several instances in conversations, emails or in forums when the project is brought up - the response is "Oh, I heard about that". If anything, we've already succeeded with our goal, to yell loud enough in the blogosphere to make Madison Avenue take note and to raise a substantial amount of money for the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

Our next goal of course is to actually get 'J.P' his moment on the largest Nationally televised sports show in history with an audience hoping to beat last year's 90.7 MM viewers. As Bob Garfield from AdAge Magazine puts it:

"Everybody and his brother thinks their Super Bowl ad is an event within an event. Every year, almost all of them are wrong. Super Bowl ads are mainly just overproduced comedy blackouts without much of a selling point. But a marriage proposal -- followed (somehow) by an answer -- is real drama, especially if the answer is "no." It's worth the money for the publicity alone, but just imagine the traffic to a properly designed website. "

Now knowing the proposer and proposee I can almost assuredly say that her response will be "YES!" and with that brings up another goal. This year, the NFL is on a push to increase viewership of the Superbowl and the demographic where they see the biggest increase is in female viewership. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated:

"It's a very big initiative," he said. "(Women) fans want to be treated as real fans because they love the game, understand the game and want to have the opportunity to experience the game just as anyone else does."

While women comprise about 40 percent of the U.S. television audience for the Super Bowl, media watchers note the broadcasts fail to address them.

Commercials during the game, the most expensive television advertising event of the year in the U.S., are dominated by beer, cars and electronics."

Andrea Learned, The co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy – And How To Increase Your Share of this Crucial Market recently wrote in her blog:

" So this is my marketing to women nudge for the cause: For those brands interested in gaining the attention of the women who watch the Superbowl as well as the men, consider these reasons:

• You will be connecting people to one another around your brand. (You sponsor it, and consumers will make note of who aligned with this intriguing event.)
• You will be presenting an emotion-filled event with which lots of Superbowl watchers - and many of your consumers - can relate.
• You will offer something very different in a "same-old" saturated several hour timeframe that is all the more likely to catch viewers off guard, and keep them from running to the kitchen for the chips.

So what are you waiting for?!"

Exactly Andrea - and combine this viewpoint with what MediaBuyerPlanner calls a "Rare Opportunity for Sponsorship", the potential that this yields for anticipation of the event and also with the ever frustrating problem of offline to online brand integration. We've kept the identity of 'J.P.' a secret for multiple reasons, primarily to keep his girlfriend from finding out and spoiling the surprise but also, to add to the mystique of the project.

Now imagine this - What if every girl in America who is involved in a serious relationship is aware that a proposal is taking place? What if the intrigue that we generate can keep her watching the game, well into the 4th quarter sitting on the edge of her seat, breathlessly anticipating and wondering if it's her? Then when the proposal airs and our bachelor has made his heartfelt plea, the commercial finishes with a "find out if she says YES...go to www.adsponsor.com/proposal" Can you now imagine the branding opportunity of taking users from offline to online - all with measurable statistics?

Combined with all of that emotion, we can also add the following benefits for a major sponsor to take up in their initiative:

• ROI for an advertiser; with massive media coverage of their ad and the proposal in addition to the Superbowl and the response video (far greater than any normal commercial) ROI could be greater than a 'normal' Superbowl ad.
  
• Direct measurement of traffic via the web; links from MySuperProposal.com and from a video site (hosting the response video) will show the advertiser the direct page views and unique visits. You can't get that with normal TV ads.
• Branding that lasts a long, long time; it will still be a video people watch and still talk about in six months. Most likely, press would continue after the proposal up to, including and after the wedding (Good Morning America has already expressed an interest in interviewing the couple the following day in New York).
  

Well that just about covers my request for additional sponsors now. ;) My feed subscribers will probably get this in time to note that we will be on MSNBC at 10:30 a.m. Eastern tomorrow January 6th. I will continue to keep you up to date as to our progress, I figure we've got a couple of weeks to go in our efforts so wish us luck. I'd also like to thank all of my fellow bloggers and search buddies who helped us out in numerous ways with links, blog posts, emails and verbal mentions - without you we wouldn't have made it this far!