📘 That feeling when you're suffering from PAR●ENT●ING

You may need... AphukenbrakE

Where were you when you first realized you needed AphukenbrakE?

Nick Fabiano texted me a link to a rough cut. I was giddy with excitement. Instant classic. I told him we should post it ASAP. Pure gold.

I had nothing to do with AphukenbrakE. Last week’s substack was an appreciation post for Nick, Ben Stumpf, and Aric Jacobson. This is part 2.

Every superhero has its origin story

Legend has it Nick was driving home from Manhattan and someone cut him off and he shouted “Gimme a fuckin break!” and then a cartoon style lightbulb appeared above his head and lit up. The rest is history…

AphukenbrakE did amazing things for the brand. It’s a perfect video.

It’s hilarious, relatable, firmly anchored in parenting. Shows a dad as involved, but tired. And it juxtaposes The Dad video team’s spectacular production skills with a ridiculous concept. It looks like a REAL pharma ad, if not better.

As a testament to the scrappy nature of The Dad team, Nick and Ben have cameos in the vid too, which I love.

That was shot on the same street as their studio.

This video took off in ways I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since.

I had multiple people tell me that they were receiving this video through TEXT. I assume one or more people downloaded it somehow and it began spreading in group texts and went TEXT viral. WHAT??? Bizarre.

In June Nick was asked how many views AphukenbrakE got overall.

“From our platforms: 13.3M, from ripoffs without credit: 110.5M”

Undeniable that the success of this video did wonders for the brand. But it could’ve done 10x more if not for people ripping the video and pawning it off as their own or pretending they didn’t know where it came from.

Such is the internet, and indeed, many people who do this mean no ill intent. And if you kindly reach out to them they will give credit or whatever you’d like. That’s the approach we’d take.

And then, there’s Jen…

This person posted it very early on and it did numbers way higher than what we were seeing. We reached out to Jen in many ways, always nicely, asking if she could at least tag us in her caption. NOPE. Jen wasn’t having it.

Her upload of AphukenbrakE is the most watched version by a long shot.

(I’ve blocked out her name and profile photo here because there’s no sense in anyone messaging or commenting. It’s not REALLY a big deal. Just annoying. Especially at the time. Jen would probably be thrilled to know I was speaking her name in all company presentations and casually referring to her as my archnemesis.)

Press

Shortly after AphukenbrakE took off, we were all over the media. My favorite was this article from Good Morning America.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/hilarious-dad-video-parent-break/story?id=52776750

I don’t cuss very much (if at all) in real life. So telling a reporter “I think deep down we could all use AphukenbrakE,” was an interesting life highlight.

When entertainment mixes with business… YOU GET OPPORTUNITY.

How else can we use this phenomenon to our advantage? That was the rallying call from leadership.

It was just before March Madness, so we created…. AphukenbrackeT! A March Madness bracket contest with AphukenbrakE branding. Just typing it out feels a little ridiculous. Quite a stretch.

The winner gets… AphukenbrakE! They could choose between:

We just calculated the costs of these things so they’d add up to $4k. Who wouldn’t take the cash?

The goal of this whole thing was to get people to enter the contest, and sign up via email. At that time (and still today), active email subscribers are valuable assets, because it provides a direct connection to your audience, without going through the almighty algorithm. We’ll talk more on this later, including a devastating use of allllll of these The Dad emails we spent so much effort acquiring. 😭😭😭

Does your brand have a large collection of emails? Even if you’re not a media brand, even if you’re a non-profit or a traditional business, don’t undervalue that data!

We had thousands of entries. The winner of the contest: some guy named Jeff Schamel.

And in the craziest coincidence that I still can’t get my head around…. Jeff lived about 30 minutes from my house! So instead of going through the hassle of shipping him a comically large check, I got in my car and met him in a park, where we staged an awkward photoshoot with a comically large check, while passersby looked on.

The check was a prop. He was paid separately. He asked me if I wanted it back and I told him he could have it. Jeff, if you’re out there, the people need to know: WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE CHECK? I like to imagine it’s hanging on his basement wall.

The sequel

In Hollywood fashion, the suits demanded a sequel. Nick resisted as long as he could, and eventually relented, creating ALonGAphukenbrakE.

I mean, it IS good. But sequels are usually a let down.

The best thing to come of that video is another crazy coincidence. Nick sent this to me right away. He says a bird just happened to fly through the shot at 43 seconds. I do believe him but also, c’mon! That looks CGI! It’s so perfect. Maybe Nick is a bird trainer?

Ted Lasso could’ve been AphukenbrakE???

Right after the video posted and was in the press, we were contacted by Warner Bros and WME talent agency. They’d seen AphukenbrakE and were interested in what we were doing. Specifically Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Cougar Town, Ted Lasso) was interested in it, and possibly adapting the concept into some type of a show. Who knows how true that is. I’m sure it’s something they say.

But we had a call with Warner Bros just 4 months into the creation of The Dad. I was in NYC for it and Nick, Ben, and I huddled around a speakerphone in a conference room in Manhattan.

Our company’s head of partnerships was on the call too, and said they would lead the discussion.

We broke the ice and chitchatted. (Nick is incredibly good at this.) We talked about The Dad and AphukenbrakE. It was going well.

And then…. MOST of the rest of the discussion was about Scary Mommy and what they had going on. Nick, Ben, and I were stunned, offended, and annoyed. The energy on the call sizzled and we sat mostly in silence for the rest.

The head of partnerships continued the discussions without us, meeting for coffee with some folks from Bill Lawrence’s team in LA. And then… nothing happened.

Look, I realize that’s usually how these things go. So it’s not surprising. But I will say that the vibe of that call that we were all on together was not ideal. And even then we could see that The Dad as a brand was not the priority. We were the underdogs.

If it sounds like we had chips on our shoulders, you’re right. We did. Perhaps too much so. And the chip on my shoulder remained for the rest of my time leading The Dad, for better or for worse.

AphukenbrakE lives on

It will never die. It is now used heavily as audio for TikToks, Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.

And I love it.

Creative people will continue to do hilarious things with it. Non-creative people will continue to rip it off and post it as their own. It’s just the way it is.

The internet never takes AphukenbrakE.