The Story of Scrub Masters

The year was 2014.

I was still getting my feet wet in the world of business to business marketing. Watching people clean a bathroom is boring. I was tired of taking before and after pictures of stains being removed. Rather than continue with the same old marketing tactics I convinced my boss to make a hip-hop music video. His only condition was, he wanted to be in it.

We give out a limited run of Scrub Masters t-shirts.

It was my second year working in marketing. Most my skills involved video production and radio. My boss, acting CMO Danny, wanted to be a viral internet star. I wanted a viral video. We were on the same page. The idea I shared to Danny was to make a music video of our industry. Not just any music video, a hip-hop music video. Danny's head exploded and the project was green-lighted.

Writing a hip-hop song is not something they teach in college, however, college taught me how to network. While I was at Weber State University I worked for the college radio station KWCR Weber FM. My work at the time was as the Production Director. I made radio ads for sponsors. The Program Director was my friend, Billy Bomber Jr., he was also studying audio production and was a real musician. He could write, play, record and produce music. (Not to mention he sang and played the saxophone).

Billy Bomber Jr. performing with "Shaky Trade"

I still had Billy's contact info, we re-connected. Then Musical Magic happened. Billy took my really crumby "first temp" at the song, used his Bomber art and transformed it into a real song. Here's an excerpt from my original notes to Billy.

Warning:  I do not have a talent for writing hip-hop.

"Listen up to hear how you gonna  get your biz spit-and-spam

Pull out that phone and Just call us up and we’ll come clean

Are your restroom messy and musty, halls flooded with popcorn and cheese

Gum all stick up in your seats, candy meltin’ in the cup holder

Does your lobby look like a rummage sale on a Spring day

"If you ain’t there don’t mean we don’t care

Nighty janitorial is a sandman tuckin’ you in, sweet dreams

Our peeps go in and pull an all nighter make it shiny

Sweeping, mopping, dusting and taking out the trash

Backpack or upright vacs get that dirt all sucked up

Every new dusk a brand new mess waitin’ for us

We’ll be there, put us to the test and lean on us"

The Scrub Masters were modeled after the theme of The Beastie Boys. In the song each MC would rap a line about Simply Right. The three dudes in the music video were employees of Simply Right. The Scrub Masters were made up of Jason Kilgore (now the CFO/owner), Danny Kilgore (Now the CEO/owner), and Erick Gomez (Regional Supervisor, he's now moved on to a different company). They all actually rapped their parts, which were recorded in Billy's basement studio.

Jason Kilgore, Danny Kilgore, and Erick Gomez made "The Scrub Masters."

If my memory serves me correctly, we filmed the entire music video in two days. Two locations in Ogden, Utah were used in the video, Marketstarr and Newgate Cinemark. Ben Sent a local photographer allowed me to rent his equipment and two of his trusted co-workers to film the project. 

As for video productions go, it was a fast and easy shoot. The hardest part of the whole production was figuring out what our rappers were going to wear. Simply Right uses the color “vine green” on all our branding. Finding a passable “green color” was a challenge. Outside of Ogden is a well-known country/ military surplus store called Smith and Edwards. I was able to find olive drab green coveralls. All the overalls where size large. Therefore, the suits would look baggy on the rappers. The polos used are the official shirts used in the company.

Once everything was shot, I was then tasked to edit. Editing a music video is a time sucker. You have to really enjoy the art of editing. I had about 5 hours of footage I had to cut down to 3 minutes and 32 seconds. All the video also has to sync-up to the music.

After all the edits were completed, I ended up with two cuts of the music video. The original owners did not like my first cut. They told me I had to remove any scenes deemed too sexual inappropriate. I had to make three major cuts. These removed cuts were also made into teasers. I was going to use the teasers to campaign the release of the music video. The owners buried the whole online video campaign. That was a major bummer.  

Removed Danny Teaser: A scene of Danny having popcorn poured onto his face.

Removed Jason Teaser: A scene of Jason walking on all fours acting like a cat while toilet paper rained down on him.

Removed Erick Teaser: The scene that made the owners really upset was Erick removing his coveralls in a dark movie theater being misted by water. The owners said Erick's tattoos were "too gang-related." This statement makes me laugh now due to the fact almost every other person today has a tattoo. 

Not everything about the campaign was cancelled. During September of 2014 we premiered the music video to the entire Carmike Cinemas company. The next day we used the Scrub Masters as our trade show booth. The booth was simple, we had the rappers signed posters, t-shirts and CDs for employees of Carmike Cinemas.

This simple campaign of premiering our music video, then hosting a signing as our booth turned out to be one of the greatest branding attempts, I've ever worked on. Carmike Cinemas never forgot who Simply Right was after this event.

However, the story of our relationship with Carmike Cinemas has a bittersweet ending. The Theater company was purchased by AMC Movie Theaters, AMC moved all their facility services in-house. Many of the general managers still run their theater and the Scrub Masters poster still hangs in their offices. 

I was really hoping to get approval to do a similar booth at CinemaCon 2015. All the logistics were worked out but in the end the owners shot down this trade show campaign as well. 

Now in 2019.

Working on Scrub Masters taught me a brand is most effective if you can connect with a customer on a personal level. We gave them something off-the-wall, something they could talk about. We gave them a little bit of magic. Scrub Masters was Simply Right at it's most fun and creative. With more experience in branding, I'm hoping to re-create the same magic again.

EXTRAS:

Here are the behind Scenes to the Scrub Masters's What'cha Wanna Clean music video.