Ben Pieratt - Schtock

THE SCHTOCK SCHTICK LASTED EIGHT DAYS AND soon after, the schtick hit the fan.

This past summer, Boston designer Ben Pieratt conceived an idea for a viral campaign that was clever and fun and to some, a bit risky. He created a fictional character, a desk-jockey named Schtock, who would break the monotony of his job at a stock photo agency by putzing around with the images when his boss wasn’t looking.

Schtock.com was a collection of Schtock’s creations: As an amateur designer, I occasionally can’t help but play around with the images I see floating across my desk on a daily basis. This site contains the results, Schtock announced on the site.

Pieratt composed a variety of images and launched Schtock to acclaim from dozens of design sites and blogs—most of whom did not know Schtock was fake. Eight days later, Pieratt announced that Schtock was a ploy—a successful one—with the “intention of getting the Corbis name in front of as many members of their target audience as possible on a limited budget.”

Quite a few people were furious. And they let Pieratt know.

“I was told that I’d never be taken seriously as an artist again,” says Pieratt. “Which is funny because I definitely don’t consider myself an artist by any means. I was told to never contact x-site again. One site…felt so embarrassed that they’d been tricked that they wished they’d never covered the campaign.”

We interviewed Pieratt to ask him more about Schtock.

What motivated you to start Schtock?

A genuine love for the Corbis catalog of images. I’d done a good share of work for them while at my previous firm, and their stuff just blew me away on a consistent basis; to the point where I wanted to interact with it beyond what we were getting paid to do.

When did you conceive the idea, and how long did it take you to set up and launch?

Summer ’08. After coming up with the idea, I went through a 2-day spree where I became obsessed and hammered out most of what you see on the site. I’ve probably done 4 or 5 images since that initial sprint. Then it took another 2 months to get organized, iron out the details, and get Eric, the developer that I work with, to code the site.

Pre-launch, what kind of reaction did you expect to get? And what kind of reaction did Schtock end up getting?

Well it was a multi-phase thing. We predicted different reactions to each phase.
The phases being: (1) Launch the site under the veil of authenticity, which was meant to get the majority of the interest from design blogs. (2) Seed doubt in its authenticity by way of hints, etc., which was meant to catch the advertising-blog circuit’s interest because of its viral-nature. (3) Reveal the double-double aspect of it, ultimately putting the credit back on us.

For the first phase, we expected the reaction that we got. Which was that people would be interested and intrigued. It was almost universally accepted across the board. The advertising blogs didn’t pick it up as much as we expected, but we still got a fair share of traffic.

Eight days after launch, you issued a press release, explaining the ruse. This after quite a bit of positive press (the site was called ‘genius’ and Schtock was dubbed a ‘modern day folk hero’. ) Why’d you cut the site so soon?

We cut the site soon for two reasons. We knew that some people were going to be annoyed by the ploy, and we tried to counter that by making it fairly obvious that the thing was a viral campaign. Between the hints and calling the design and the site the work of an amateur, we meant to put people on the right path. But just in case some people were still sold on the whole thing, we didn’t want them to get too emotionally invested in the guy or the story. So it was a preventative measure. We also cut it because blogs are notoriously hard to keep the attention of, and we wanted to strike while the iron was hot, increasing our chances of the whole 3-phased story getting carried through to the end.

The announcement upset quite a few people. Why do you think they were mad?

I think a big part of the reason people love viral is because they can see it coming. They enjoy the show and knowing that they’re a part of it. The self-aware irony of it is a big part of the appeal. Whereas in this case they thought they knew what was going on and then the rug got pulled out from under them. I can see where that wouldn’t be a pleasant sensation.

You actually did work with Corbis as a client in the past, with your previous firm, Fwis. How did the Schtock campaign fit in with Fwis? And have you heard from Corbis yet?

Schtock has nothing to do with Fwis. I’m sure they’re grateful for this fact. Haha. We’ve heard from a number of current- and ex-Corbis employees telling me how much they love the site and the campaign. Which has been great to hear.

Beyond that, we haven’t received any sort of official contact from Corbis, nor do we really expect to. They’re a big company, they plan their campaigns 12 months in advance. I don’t expect to just waltz in and get a bunch of work from them, as nice as that would be. Especially not when they’ve got Fwis continuing to do a lot of excellent stuff for them. I’m actually expecting a cease and desist any day now. haha.

Will Schtock have a short shelf life then? It seems harmless, and perhaps beneficial to Corbis if it stayed up.

The motivations for the site haven’t changed, the Corbis library continues to impress and inspire. So until we run out of ideas or we get asked to take it down, you can expect regular updates.

After this experience, are more viral campaigns on the way?

Ultimately, it’s not so much the ‘viral’ aspect that we’re interested in as it is the ability to get a big return on a limited investment. Schtock was a simple idea that took no more than 30-40 hours worth of work that put the Corbis and General Projects brands in front of a couple hundred thousand people. This combination of strong concept, good design, and a contextual marketing is something we have pursued with a number of our past projects and will definitely continue to work with in the future.

You’ve had some other projects get some wide exposure, covered by some of the same places that covered Schtock.

The two most successful projects would have to be Covers and Readymechs.

Covers, a book cover blog which I started but no longer participate in, quickly became the industry standard. It also lead to a number of connections in the publishing world, which have proven invaluable. Readymechs were launched three years ago, and continue to rack up over 10,000 downloads a month. Funnily enough, Schtock was contacted by a couple different publishers looking for book cover design work. A huge compliment as far as that goes.

Okay finally Ben, what does this Schtock guy look like—when you picture him, sitting at his desk, in his runt little cubicle? Bow tie, coke-bottle glasses?

I honestly just pictured myself, right out of school. I had taken a couple quick jobs at larger firms to keep the bills paid, and I’d be working my ass off at night, trying to put something out there that I was proud of, regardless of my day job.

I think a lot of people in this industry go through that kind of situation. Not working on what they’d really like to be doing. Which is probably why the character resonated so well.