More Than A Jerk

To promote organ donation, The Martin Agency creates a memorable, awful character.

- Tony Case

We come from different places, have our individual jobs, families, hobbies, charms, quirks and beliefs. But among the things we all have in common: everybody everywhere knows somebody who’s a giant asshole.

That indelicate little fact of life made a PSA promoting organ donation one of the most successful ads of the past year, and probably one of the most daring pieces of marketing ever—beginning with its very racy title.

“The World’s Biggest Asshole,” a nearly three-minute film created by The Martin Agency for client Donate Life, an organ donation advocacy group, tells the story of Coleman F. Sweeney, an unseemly character who, among other things, pees in a beer bottle while speeding along in his pickup, then tosses it out the window; shoots his paint gun at a neighbor’s dog; steals women’s underwear from a laundromat, and children’s Halloween candy; and haggles with a waitress over the skimpy portion of fries that comes with a $1.99 lunch special. But when he kicks the bucket, we discover that Sweeney (played to irritating perfection by Thomas Jane) had, against anyone’s expectation, signed up to be an organ donor. We are then taken through the stories of individuals Sweeney’s selfless act saved—and see how the jerk ultimately ended up doing good in the world.