Matt Harding is a computer games designer who, at the age of 23, moved from America to Australia, and then decided to travel the world before settling down. Being a programmer, he set up a website to let his family know where he was and what he was up to.

A few months into his trip, he and his friend were taking pictures on the streets of Hanoi when the friend suggested Matt should do a stupid dance to be filmed for the website. Matt did so. They agreed it looked funny and should become Matt’s signature for filming everywhere he went.

A few years later, in 2005, Matt found his video on YouTube, where someone else (pretending to be Matt) had uploaded it. Matt says that ‘something like a million people had watched it’ and whoever had posted it was collecting donations!
Around this time, Matt got an e‑mail from a chewing gum company called Stride. They asked if he would be interested in making another dancing video for them. He said he would, if they would pay for it and he could go wherever he wanted. To his amazement they agreed, so he set off, with camera in hand and his girlfriend, Melissa, beside him to film it.

On that trip, Matt mostly just danced in front of iconic landmarks. When he was in Rwanda he could not find any world famous landmarks, so instead he just went to a small village and danced with some of the village’s children, who joined him immediately and without hesitation.
This gave Matt an idea, and he went back to Stride to pitch it to them. He told them his films would be much better – and would gain more on‑line followers – if they included Matt dancing with other people, rather than just in front of landmarks, and suggested he should make another trip with that approach. Stride agreed, again.

In 2008, Matt put out another video that showed thousands of people from all around the world laughing, smiling, and dancing with him. The site’s Internet following exploded and Matt was hired by Visa to do his dance in a series of TV ads that air across Asia and the Middle East.
Since then, Matt has bought a house in Washington, settled down and had a child with Melissa. He says he ‘doesn’t have to worry about money so much anymore’.

Questions

Go to www. wherethehellismatt. com/ videos and watch the films mentioned in the case study.

1. Matt’s trips were sponsored by Stride Gum. Who actually gained the most from this, Matt or Stride?

2. Do you think this sponsorship was a good investment for Stride Gum or not? If not, what could they have done to increase their exposure and/ or their return on investment?

3. How could Matt have used social media to amplify this activity?

4. How could the impact of this have been measured?