As soon as they spotted the Reddit post and Twitter conversation, the social team immediately began responding with clever tweets. “Crunchgate” exploded into a full-blown controversy as journalists, Tweeters and even the U.S. Navy weighed in. By monitoring social mentions around the clock, we playfully kept the conversation going with all influencers and media who engaged the Cap’n. We worked quickly to script and produce the Cap’n’s response video in just a few days, before the excitement died down. We took advantage of the PR opportunity by conducting additional media outreach around the video response, generating even more follow-up coverage.

The Cap’n response tweet received 533 retweets and the video garnered more than 65,000 views on YouTube. We generated PR coverage in 525 mainstream media outlets, including top-tier TV coverage on The Colbert Report, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Conan, The Tonight Show, Anderson Cooper 360, Good Morning America (twice!) among others. The controversy resulted in more than 689MM mainstream media impressions and 170MM social media impressions within 30 days, resulting in a purely organic ROI of $0.05 CPM – all with absolutely zero paid media. The controversy also contributed to a 5.9% increase in dollar sales vs. prior year.