While you know him better as Scumbag Steve, Blake Boston is a living example of how to exchange Internet fame (infamy?) into real world financial gain. After finding his Internet fame via the Reddit collective, Scumbag Steve is about to appear in an ad campaign for Pepsi’s Brisk iced tea. It should be noted that the ad campaign finds Pepsi not only partnering with the popular meme figure, the company is also leveraging the Imgur image hosting service.
According to Agency Spy, promoted images of Scumbag Steve’s Brisk campaign will appear on Imgur, which will no doubt make use of the meme images that made Boston such a popular figure on the Internet. While there’s been no discussion of Steve’s financial reward for the ad campaign, it’s not a stretch to think it will be fairly lucrative.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Scumbag Steve meme, Know Your Meme is all over it, complete with examples of the images that led to his notoriety. Then there’s the videos Blake/Steve has created, demonstrating he, too, is having fun with his Internet fame:
And no, those videos are not for the same song. Sure, they sound alike, but then again, so does every song ever recorded by Katy Perry, and she doesn’t get knocked for her hustle. With that in mind, neither should Steve/Blake. Naturally, Twitter noticed Steve’s good fortune:
Brisk Tea teams up with Scumbag Steve (yes, that Scumbag Steve) to make banner ads you might actually notice: http://t.co/9EsyD37I
Stop it Internet RT @copyranter: Scumbag Steve is now a SpokesScumbag for Pepsi: http://t.co/s8nWRdyF #EndTimes
Shouldn’t that be “stop it Pepsi?”
Work That Matters: “Scumbag Steve” #meme the latest victim of product placement http://t.co/kKLUnXer
Victim? I think our definitions differ… While it appears as if the Scumbag Steve/Brisk Iced Tea ads will be image-based, I’m not going to let that stop me from featuring a couple of my favorite Brisk ads from years past:
Let’s just hope Scumbag Steve’s image ads are as cool as a claymation Bruce Lee.