Viral East Hills Mall Commercial 10 Years Later

(ST. JOSEPH, Mo.) St. Joseph has many claims to fame...the Pony Express.. Walter Cronkite, historic architecture, Cherry Mash, but also, on a different note, St. Joseph is also home of the *terrible mall commercial", that 10 years ago, put St. Joseph on the map for a different reason.

We visited with KQ2's Chris Fleck, the creator of the viral commercial, for a quick look back..

It's the 10-year anniversary of the mall commercial that took the world by storm... and it all started right here, at the East Hills Mall in St. Joseph when the mall manager reached out to Chris Fleck for a back-to-school shopping commercial...

Fleck recalls, "I had one stipulation with my account rep, and he was in a band with me, I said, 'Find me employees who can sing.' So when I get to the shoot and the first employee says, 'Sing?' I knew I was going to get a whole different kind of commercial, but the mall wanted to go viral. And I'm like, "This could go viral." And boy, was I right."

And viral, it went, racking up millions of views in a time when going viral was something special,

"And I started getting texts from friends," Fleck laughs, "and they're like, 'Hey, dude, your commercial is blowing up on the internet.' So I just sat back and watched it go."

Somewhere along the line, the Ellen Show got word of the commercial and put it on their website. Soon the mall employees in the commercial were even flown out to the show.

Ellen introduced the ad on her show, "It's a real commercial for a mall in Missouri, in St Joseph Missouri,"

The views going from a million to 2 million and beyond. That's when the media frenzy started.

Fleck remembers, "I went from making a commercial to being on Skype interview on Inside Edition. We were every fluff piece at the end of every national news broadcast. We were on morning shows. We were on political shows."

The commercial appearing everywhere, was parodied and covered by everything from MLB teams to Hollywood actors.

Fleck recalled, "Cecily Strong and Kristen Wiig had a viral lip sync video on DubSmash. It got weird, but it was fun."

And whether people were laughing with the commercial or at it, it did what it was supposed to do, and put the mall front of mind.

Fleck said proudly, "Of the brands that reported their income to the mall that were in the commercial, there was a 30 to 40% increase in sales. There's no such thing as bad press. (It was) The most surreal two weeks of my life, and it was a hell of a ride."