How does 4,000 people and 120,000 water balloons sound? Well take a look at this video to get a brief sample: http://vimeo.com/groups/16610/videos/13595254
World Record Water Balloon Fight BYU 2010 from (LTAV) Jace LeRoy on Vimeo.
We became the task force for BYU Spring/Summer, an on-campus client we’ve been working with for several months. They wanted to make this record-breaking water balloon fight happen, and we were the ones that were going to make it happen. Not only were we tasked with accomplishing this Guinness Record, but we also pitched the water balloon idea to McCann-Erickson New York, who we were also working with to produce a music video for Kyle Andrews. His song has recently been featured in a series of Holiday Inn ads. They agreed and thought the idea would be great for a video. So after weeks of planning, all the details were in place and we were ready to roll.
As we came to find out, the hard part had only begun. As much as we were excited for the video shoot and water fight to arrive, we also needed as much time as possible to actually fill 120,000 water balloons. Nearly everyone in the lab helped out at some point along the way, and a ‘lucky few’ even stayed for 48 hours to make sure we reached our goal. At about 8:00 AM on the day of the event, we finally finished.
As you’ll see from the video link before, there was nothing that could have prepared us for the pandaemonium that ensued. All the balloons that took multiple days to fill were gone in about six minutes. But everyone had a blast, and the event was a success. Props to us for so much manual labor! The first official count said we broke the record, previously held by the University of Kentucky, by 25 people and 1,000 balloons.
The shoot for the music video portion ran into a few hold-ups because of the logistics of filming a water-soaked event, but we made the best of it. The TMA students did a great job of working with what they could considering the circumstances. We are excited to see the final product. The lab got all sorts of publicity for the event, and we are happy to get our name get out there for the work we do.
-Scott Stevens
Copywriter