This Road Trip Sponsored By...

The ad model of "two guys go off on a cross-country road trip to promote some product" should be nearing its demise, certain innovative ad agencies excluded. We've seen cereals, beers, Weber grills and other assorted items hawked in this sometimes-funny, usually-stupid fashion. It probably all started decades ago with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, but after the Alka-Seltzer sponsored "Speedy's Road Trip" concludes in Maine later this month, I'm pretty sure no one will have executed this idea quite as well as Rhett and Link, a couple of clowns from North Carolina, who began their tour in San Diego on Cinco de Mayo. Engineers by training, the pair abandoned corporate life for the lure of You Tube fame, because "they realized that sitting in front of a computer all day was going to kill them."

Through a series of songs, skits and ironically raised eyebrows, the two childhood friends document their journey through uploaded videos to Alka Selter's pretty nice microsite devoted to the journey. This one, done in Boston, is a nice spoof on the hideousness of locally produced TV spots. After only three days, it's been seen over 35K times on YouTube. You can't expect much more from a short-lived viral effort.



Another pretty good one here they did in DC oddly has half as many views as the previous after nearly a month.