A tale about the man in the hat, who snapped his fingers and the whole country was stirred up.
If there is a success story among Hungarian television commercials, then MÜSZI can definitely be considered one. This advertisement made the clumsy acronym created from the name of the Agricultural Business Organization Computing and Information Ltd., which mainly sold agricultural software, widely known with overwhelming force at the end of the 1980s, as well as its one-word character, Csongor Bazsó.
The concept reveals a lot, as the role was originally intended to be played by an actor dressed as a peasant. The legendary word was finally uttered in an unexpectedly empty studio, in front of the set of János Gálvölgyi's New Year's Eve cabaret, by the editor of MÜSZI Ltd. (later its press chief) – amidst the trademark snap.
What is the reason for MÜSZI's success?
MÜSZI is one of the first Hungarian television teaser commercials. In the first spot, they aimed to increase brand awareness using the tool of timed tension-building. The teaser worked perfectly: due to its mysteriousness, the advertisement quickly became a topic of conversation.
Its visual world was completely different from the usual clichés. In the 1980s, alongside the almost monopolistic musical, funny, entertaining commercials, MÜSZI became its own entity with its black-and-white visual representation. The music was „borrowed” from the main theme of one of the James Bond films (The Man with the Golden Gun).
MÜSZI was simply different from other commercials. It did not strive for either rational or emotional impact. It did not want to entertain or convince. It wanted to hammer in the mysterious teaser, but with the teaser, it shot all its bullets. In the second version of the TV spot, despite the additional information appearing alongside the 10-second, visually-based product communication, the specific message remained invisible in the light of the magical word.
The teaser captured the consumers.: the combination of the man in the hat, the gesture, and the magical word. Therefore, no one was curious about the message of the TV spot. The decoding was not helped by the fact that the two-word message (software/bond) was at least as enigmatic at the end of the 1980s as the acronym itself...
The magical ritual (the word and the snap) began to meme., the gesture and word became a trademark. MÜSZI jokes and caricatures were born, and it became a popular pet name. It became embedded in school and workplace slang. Ludas Matyi announced a MÜSZI joke contest (the first prize was a Commodore-64 computer). Several New Year's Eve parodies were also created from it.
The first domestic brand hijacking occurred. Consumers took power over MÜSZI despite knowing absolutely nothing about it. The appropriation of the brand happened in the early stages of its introduction, almost in the first minute. Marketing communication failed: consumers merely „purchased” an idea, a magical word.
Numerous urban legends were born regarding the advertisement. It spread that the main character was the director of the company (Bazsó recounted in an interview that the idea for the commercial actually came from Dr. Tibor Tóth, the chairman and CEO).
The advertisement outlived itself: Csongor Bazsó became one of the country's most famous commercial actors. He became a true celebrity: he appeared in entertainment shows and even edited a book about the MÜSZI advertisement. Hats off with the title. (The book was created using Zsófia Horváth's thesis: „The Anatomy of a Successful Advertisement”).
In the later continuation of the advertisement, a whole sentence was already given to it (the „There is no cucumber season with us!” sentence also became a catchphrase), but in reality, it could no longer repeat the success of the „magic ritual.”.
Was the advertisement really genius and did it achieve its goal? Two things are certain: the MÜSZI hat became a sought-after product at flea markets, and no advertisement has burned into the Hungarian national psyche like MÜSZI's strange, incomparable TV spot.
Are you interested in the topic?
I recommend to you:
- Secret on the poster
- Alex Wippenfürth: Diverged Brands – Marketing-Free Marketing, HVG Könyvek Publisher, 2008.
- Csongor Bazsó ed.: Off with the hat! MÜSZI Rt. Information and Publishing Department, Budapest, 1990.
