Produced the film herself

Thea Friborg, the ‘blonde clone’, promoted the Faculty of Science to a million people for just DKK 10,000 – practically for free by marketing standards

by Christoffer Zieler

The Faculty of Science has grabbed a lot of attention from a short film that Thea Friborg produced in just four days.

It turns out that the cloned woman is also the film’s director, and that she produced the ad in just four days.
Thea is currently doing her masters in Marketing and Management Communication in Århus and has spent a year at film school.

When she heard of the competition, she spent an hour brainstorming with a cameraman.

»Then we’d got the right idea. The rest took just three days; we filmed on the second day, and edited it on the day after that. A couple of friends from the film school lent me a hand – one of them mixed the sound, the other took care of the colour grading,« she says.

Sexism and pony tails

Despite its female protagonists’ office attire, Thea Friborg’s film plays upon a classic male fantasy –a buffet of accessible women’s bodies.

Women who are available in the laboratories where the only ponytails you would normally find would be just below the lonely near-sighted male post.doc’s bald spot.

Thea is really pretty. All tall and thin-like. What the hell is she doing?

How did you feel about casting yourself as the babe in some male sex fantasy?

»I had misgivings – very briefly. But this film is based on humour and irony, and I don’t need to take myself all that seriously.«

»Besides, it was the practical solution. We had limited time to find locations, props and actors, and I have a background as a child actor and a model through nine years. So I am used to standing in front of a camera,« she says.

The film only made second place, but it got the clicks online instead – the only true laurels of viral marketing.

Brand new standards

In 2007 the University of Copenhagen spent DKK 2.5 million on a branding campaign that manifested itself in a series of large posters in public spaces. The campus tooted its own horn, boasting its fine rankings and new-found relationship with the world’s great universities.

This was the good old strategy of throwing huge amounts of cash after a bunch of marketing consultants. Thea Friborg’s film cost the Faculty DKK 10,000. The Faculty has now commissioned her to produce four more films.
She is fascinated with the possibilities:

»Viral marketing is becoming a necessary tool,« she says.

So what now? How is your future as a freelancer looking?

»The film has had producers and writers contacting me, so I feel like I have struck lucky in a difficult business«.

chz@adm.ku.dk

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