The stories could have been written from the company’s point of view. But the Gnome allowed for a much more humourous and irreverent voice that would engage our audience and stand out in heavy-going science magazines. To add extra educational value – and because the facts were so fascinating – he also tried his best to delve into complex science relevant to each location; dark matter, supersymmetry and the hunt for the Higgs Boson. Each ad invited readers to follow the adventures of Kern the Gnome at GnomeExperiment.com or to speak with Kern the company for questions relating to scales.

Our stories have ran in just three German magazines so far and already they have already rekindled interest in the story, with almost 1000 new requests to weigh the gnome, over 7000 new visitors to gnomeexperiment.com and a 27% surge in visits to Kern-sohn.com But best of all, two distributors who saw the ads signed up with Kern, which will result in an estimated 5000% return on investment this year. More results to follow.