May 22, 2005
The Crazy Frog: History and Success Explained
Few people have heard of Wernquist, a 27-year-old Swede, but even those who haven't may still appreciate his gesture. He - perhaps more than anybody else - is responsible for the Crazy Frog, according to The Telegraph.
"The story of the frog starts in 1997 when Daniel Malmedahl, a Swedish 17-year-old, recorded his impersonation of the sound made by the two-stroke engines of his friends' scooters. His recording raised chuckles, and he put it on the internet, and was even asked to perform it on Swedish tele-vision.
For years, members of the online community who surf the web for fun, found it and laughed before telling their friends. The recording grew increasingly popular and, in 2001, was used in the Insanity Test, an online joke. If you could listen to the sound and stare at a picture of a red Formula One car for more than 60 seconds without laughing, you passed the test: you were clearly insane.
In 2002, Wernquist, a designer of 3D-graphics, took the test and chortled. He didn't know where the sound came from but, using his computer skills, he spawned the frog character, which he called The Annoying Thing, and created an animated cartoon which he posted on the website of his company, Turbo-Force 3D, where it is still available free of charge.
When he created the frog, he did not even know who had made the noise. His website included a request for the creator of the sound to contact him. A friend of Malmedahl's saw it and put the two in touch by phone. To this day, Wernquist and Malmedahl, who now sells computer components, haven't actually met.
It was only in 2004, that a worker at Jamba!, a German ringtone company, spotted its popularity on the internet and put it forward as an idea to his bosses. Markus Berger-de Leon, chief operating officer of Jamba!, says: "All of us saw it, the whole executive team, and we thought 'This is going to be big'." They approached Wernquist and Malmedahl and bought the rights.
Anyway, the frog teaches two business lessons.
-- Its success relied on the pairing of the internet and mobile phones. Without the web, the sound would probably be languishing on a tape somewhere.
-- And, while advertising played a role, the frog's success was built largely on the viral marketing of teenagers texting one another.
[...] What is more, no shops have been involved. The frog has been sold direct via SMS text messages and over the internet.
Indeed, the frog illustrates one of the most striking aspects of the mobile-phone-content business: the way it is evolving outside of traditional media companies rather than within them.
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