Today, Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT), the Search Experience Cloud company, has launched its first-ever advertising campaign, tapping creative agency powerhouse TBWA\Chiat\Day NY to develop its provocative new platform, "The Man Without the Answers."
With research conducted by Yext revealing 82% of answers about brands online are unverified, the company has taken aim at the spread of misinformation with its new creative campaign.
The central piece is a hero 90 second campaign video by award-winning director Kenny Herzog, which takes a comical approach to the spread of fake news and misinformation on the internet. While misinformation online is often associated with politics, misinformation is also a business problem. The Yext campaign includes three industry-specific cutdowns to demonstrate the destructive impact it can have on the financial services, healthcare, and retail industries.
The creative is a humorous yet urgent call to action for CMOs and c-suite executives to take charge of answering online questions about their brand, before others do. By doing so they are taking an important step in combatting misinformation online, a potentially catastrophic business problem. Todd Munion, the spot's central character, is the human manifestation of this problem – constantly providing inaccurate, incomplete, or opinion-based commentary disguised as fact.
"Misinformation wreaks havoc on the internet every day. Yext's mission is to restore the truth online with Brand Verified Answers," said Yext Founder and CEO Howard Lerman. "We've tapped TBWA\Chiat\Day NY to bring our vision to life through a massive new campaign, 'The Man Without the Answers,' to show the world what happens when misinformation goes unchecked."
By integrating with the world's leading search platforms (including Google, Alexa, Bing, Siri, Facebook, and more) to keep business information and data up-to-date wherever consumers search, Yext has given brands back control of the facts about them online.
"It's always exciting to work with a founder, and to be a brand's first ad agency," added TBWA\Chiat\Day NY Chief Creative Officer Chris-Beresford Hill "You have the chance to help establish a new creative identity and find and define a white space. Yext has been an incredibly collaborative partner, and the work reflects it."
The timing of the "The Man Without the Answers" launch coincides with Yext's annual ONWARD19 conference.
Yext's "The Man Without The Answers" content is available for download here.
