The other day was Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s. They have this event every year to promote their ice cream. They really don’t need the publicity, but they do it anyway. I suppose that if they didn’t, people would become upset, and they would lose business. But they must lose tons of money on this, as hordes of people show up to every location in Vermont. This leads me to wonder: How do large companies handle promotions?
Shamelessly. They handle promotions shamelessly. It’s like the Manifesto T-shirts, possibly coming soon – they’re comfortable, versatile, and the best way to promote everyone’s favorite website. Tell your friends. Ben & Jerry’s is slightly less shameless, largely because everyone loves the veritable holiday. However, when a company hires a skywriting plane to write its name in the sky over the Super Bowl, that’s shameless. I wish I had that kind of money.
Okay, so maybe Ben & Jerry's is kinda shameless....
In December of 1999, a small startup not yet launched got a town in Oregon to change its name – to Half.com. Now a popular fixed-priced online retailer, Half.com clearly had enough influence – as a small start-up – to get an entire town to change its name. Besides the fact that Half.com, Oregon, had a whopping population of 360 and really did it for the tourism, the important thing is that a start-up got an entire town to change its name. (According to then-CEO Joshua Kopelman, he chose what used to be Halfway, Oregon, for its “folksy, warm nature…. They have llama rides.”) The promotion seems to have worked, as Kopelman sold Half.com to eBay the same year his site launched – for $350 million.
Town names have been promotionally changed in the past. Dish, Texas, and the “Google, Kansas” April Fools joke, to name two. Ismay, Montana, temporarily changed its name to Joe in 1993, to honor Joe Montana. The promotion was hugely successful. And by “hugely successful,” I mean that the 26-person town is still very much unheard-of. But the award for most shameless promotion in history would have to go towww.themediamanifesto.wordpress.com. Manifesto, OUT.
