• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 29, 2019

Yext’s internal creative talent, along with agency TBWA\Chiat\Day NY, on Tuesday launched its first major advertising campaign, The Man Without the Answers.

The digital campaign, which runs through January 2020, calls for C-suite executives to answer online questions about their brands in content and directories before others do.

The campaign’s spokesperson, Todd Munion, is always there to give the wrong answer whenever someone asks a question.

“The information isn’t always malicious or dangerous,” said Owen Fegan, VP creative director at Yext. “Sometimes you can find the humor in it.”

Fegan, who worked on the campaign with his team and TBWA\Chiat\Day NY, joined Yext four years ago to build out an internal agency and rebrand the company.

“Todd, in a simple way, communicates a complicated offering” -- the battle of misinformation -- he said. “A lot of the lines were written on set in real-time through text messages.”

The video campaign, created by award-winning director Kenny Herzog, takes a comical approach to the spread of fake news and misinformation across the internet.

One 90-second video was produced, along with several 30-second adaptations to address misinformation across healthcare, retail and financial services.

Yext integrates with search platforms such as Google, Bing, Yandex and others to keep business information and data up to date across the internet.

Marketers believe only 35% of online information available about their brands is accurate and up-to-date. The company’s mission statement is to “perfect answers everywhere.”

The character Munion, played by actor Mike Rock, personifies the challenge brands deal with in putting a face to the issue of misinformation online. He consistently provides inaccurate and incomplete or opinion-based information disguised as facts, showing how this information can mislead consumers.

Engage Arts is responsible for buying the media. The campaign will run as online video, LinkedIn and connected TV, as well as hyper-targeted digital out-of-home (DOOH). For the DOOH ads, technology can target passersby based on advertisements they might have seen on the internet from their phones. 

The launch of the campaign, The Man Without the Answers, debuts at Yext’s annual ONWARD19 conference.