‘Instagram Husband’ crew lands Fossil ad

Springfield creatives are behind the marketing campaign for Fossil’s new Q Hybrid Smartwatch.

Spearheaded by Jeff Houghton of Springfield late-night show “The Mystery Hour,” the video ad “Just Husbands” tells the story of how the new watches with a selfie button can ease the plight of the so-called Instagram husband. The work for Fossil seems to be commercial vindication for Houghton and his creative team’s “Instagram Husband” parody video that went viral about a year ago.

The Fossil video released Oct. 28 shows the husbands’ new lives now that they don’t have to take selfies of their wives. It garnered nearly 100,000 views in the first six days.

“Instagram Husband” now has more than 5.7 million YouTube views, and the #InstagramHusband hashtag has been used some 92,000 times on Facebook. The buzz reached celebrity peak in July when Jimmy Fallon referenced Instagram husbands in his late-night monologue and New York magazine identified Jay Z as one.

The sudden success of the initial video flung Houghton into a complex market, one difficult to understand and capitalize on.

But creative efforts and hard work are finally paying off for the team, which has participated in two paid advertisements for major brands Fossil and 7-Eleven.

“It has been 10 years of no money and these videos don’t cure it, but it’s just nice to be able to pay people that are working on the video and to actually have a budget to work with,” Houghton said, declining to disclose the team’s earnings.

Brandon Goodwin of Springfield-based Blend Productions shot and edited the original “Instagram Husband” video for minimal pay. He also worked on the new work as Fossil hired Houghton and Houghton hired Goodwin to shoot “Just Husbands.”

Houghton said money is made with online content through YouTube preroll ads or by working with brands. He also learned the concept of freebooting.

Frank Gonzales, producer and operations manager of “The Mystery Hour,” said the “Instagram Husband” video has 20 million additional views on Facebook from fans downloading the video and uploading it themselves – the practice called freebooting.

“So what happens is if someone freeboots your video off of YouTube, it inhibits the money you can make on it, but kind of helping to offset that is more of an opportunity to work with brands,” Houghton said.  

Goodwin said the first video helped create marketability and recognition for all involved.

“I saw it as a good problem that we made something so universally relatable and funny that people saw value in stealing it,” he said, noting most advertising agencies, internal marketing departments and art directors he’s talked to have heard of the “mockumentary.”

Houghton considered contacting an intellectual property rights attorney in December, but instead he sent individual requests to freebooters and the practice proved fairly effective.

“You just can’t squash all of it,” he said. “If it happens again, I will just kind of know that is part of it.”

The “Instagram Husband” viral experience caused Houghton to expand his vision. He still wants “The Mystery Hour” to become a nationally syndicated show out of Springfield, but he sees more opportunities.

“And we do all these different aspects, too: online videos, TV show, branded content, maybe a podcast,” he said. “My hope would be that we are doing all those things.”

He’s adapting to a changing market.

“You don’t just do TV anymore,” he said. “Going viral was very illuminating: it was a good education on the digital side of things. I knew people who made digital videos. We put a bunch of stuff up on YouTube. I didn’t know the backend of it – the business of it.”

Houghton said traditional advertising has lost some of its share to social media, and brands are looking for more creative ways to get in front of audiences – with branded content, for example.

“Brands will reach out to people that have made stuff on social media or have a following,” he said. “So they end up paying far less than they would ever pay for a commercial, and then we get paid more than we would ordinarily make for a local commercial.”

The Fossil ad is the second paid commercial for the “Instagram Husband” crew.

The group’s 7-Eleven ad, “Food for Eating,” was filmed about six months ago, and it has resulted in 99,000 views. It promotes the Dallas-based chain’s sandwiches and Big Gulp drinks.

It’s been a busy five weeks for Houghton. He’s bounced from Toronto, where he hosted Facebook Live broadcasts for the Enactus World Cup, to St. Louis by airplane so he could drive to the Mid-America Emmy Awards in Branson, and then began writing the Fossil ad before traveling to New York to shoot a commercial for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. He finally shot the Fossil video and then filmed the “Ozark Jubilee” tribute show for “The Mystery Hour.” He hopes to keep his activities to a minimum during the next few weeks.

“I’m always semifrantic, but I’ve been particularly frantic the last month,” he said.