Podcast listeners are used to hearing repetitive preroll advertisements before their beloved shows. But much like Serial, the investigative podcast of the 1999 murder of a Baltimore high school student, the MailChimp ad has also become a viral hit.
The ad for the email marketing service, which sponsors Serial, is short and sweet. It uses regular people on the street to deliver the message instead of a professional voice actor, much like the Radiolab preroll.
[seealso slug="serial-podcast"]
But it's not just the redundancy of the MailChimp name being drilled into your brain that makes it memorable, it's when one young girl has a hard time pronouncing the word "chimp," and it comes out as "kimp." Listen below.
Serial fans have taken the mispronunciation and made it their own, including #MailKimp in their tweets about the show and jokingly including it in their conspiracy theories.
whoa, found out why the person at the beginning of Serial mispronounces "Mail Chimp" pic.twitter.com/TxW9DNEtBp— Achilles Stamatelaky (@astamate) November 6, 2014
.@Serial: can #SerialSeason2 just be 12 episodes about the girl who pronounces it "mail kimp"? #Serial #MailKimp— Court (@courtytooshorty) November 5, 2014
Too Many… Kimps?— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) November 10, 2014
MailChimp has now embraced the mispronunciation by snapping up MailKimp.com and redirecting it to MailChimp.com. And a MailKimp fan out there has even created a parody @MailKimp Twitter account.
It's pronounced "Shimp."— Mail Kimp (@MailKimp) November 6, 2014
Send even *better* e-mail. Sign up now at http://t.co/Qrgc31PpTB.— Mail Kimp (@MailKimp) November 6, 2014
Loyal @serial listeners will love this: @MailChimp has bought the http://t.co/r1kJBpL88d domain name.— David Gura (@davidgura) November 12, 2014
Wired also noted that MailChimp's CEO Ben Chestnut updated his Twitter bio earlier this week to include a MailKimp reference.
So is it just a great ad? Did MailChimp unlock a viral marketing secret, or are Serial fans just so desperate for more that they've resorted to talking about its sponsor?
CORRECTION, 6:13 p.m. ET: MailChimp marketing director Mark DiCristina tells us that @MailChimp isn't behind @MailKimp:
@bkurbs For the record, MailChimp doesn't own @mailkimp— Mark DiCristina (@markdicristina) November 12, 2014