A5 ATLANTA · 2011–2012 · CARDINAL & COMPANY
A barber bet you couldn't sit through a haircut without laughing. Chris Webber lost.
Laugh in Marcus Harvey's chair and you pay, to charity. $1,000+ raised, and a barber became a comedian with tape.
The stakes
Marcus Harvey was two things at once, and neither was helping the other: a luxury barber, and a comedian with real talent and no platform.
I had just hatched an agency and wanted clients. Between us: a chair, a story, no money. That’s roughly every creator who’s asked me for help since.
The problem was never whether Marcus was funny. “Trust me, he’s funny” isn’t something anybody can act on.
The move
Turn the chair into the format.
Cuttin’ Up with Marcus Harvey. One rule a stranger can repeat after hearing it once: sit through a full haircut without laughing and it’s free. Laugh, and you pay. To charity.
You can’t prove a barber is funny. You can film people losing a bet to him, over and over. Nobody in the chair is a plant. The stakes are real, tiny, and funny. That’s the whole brief for anything that spreads.
The proof
No stills survive for this one. It was always moving pictures anyway, and the film is better than the frames would have been.
The receipts
NBA legend Chris Webber sat in the chair for the 2012 celebrity edition.
Twitter goes bananas. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a viral haircut go crazy online. Like, “who the hell just cut Chris Webber’s hair?”
The credit
Cardinal & Company. And Marcus, who did the actual hard part.
This one’s for the creator or small brand with something genuinely good and no way to prove it. Not a smaller Delta problem. A different problem, and this is how you solve it.