P.S. Good to meet you (however briefly) today! Catch up with ya soon.

The interesting thing about this (and a lot of actual truly viral things) is that he didn’t set out to make it huge – he was just having some fun and it was infectious.

He wouldn’t have even thought about the idea that he would do a partnership with Mr Vintage and instantly become a piece of Kiwiana.

I brought the Triceratops and the Stegosaurus – I can’t wait, it’s going to be a great conversation starter.

Definitely agree that it is on a similar scale to the beached as video – but the only way it will get to that is through a video remix…. hmmmmm might be a good project to work on this week – I’m sure others already are!

Right – off to kick my blog into gear – I’m a testdriver for Telecom XT – got my SIM on Friday – loving it!!

James

From what I can tell, he is going to do very well out of this – considering he began this to purely sell his washing machine.

Also you all do realise this is about a washing maching by F&P’s competitor right?

What Fisher and Paykel get to take from this, whether they were in the masterminds behind the listing or not, is long term recognition. I’m an American living in New Zealand and I don’t know a lot of the brand names for things here. Back home F&P doesn’t exist and prior to today I had heard of them, but had no unique experience with which to connect them, no distinct memory that I could use to distinguish them from other brands. As of today that has changed.

From now on anytime I see a washing machine I’ll remember that listing and laugh. It will come up randomly over dinner conversations with friends years from now when I’m no longer living here and I will essentially end up carrying the brand with me. Why? Because it was so random, so absolutely hilarious, and everyone I know was talking about it this afternoon. Does this type of thing work on everyone? No of course not, but for people like me it’s the PERFECT way to get your product solidified in my memory for a LONG TIME.

So yeah, what can a business do drive traffic – well yes you can do something like this but you forgot some key points

1) this is hit and run, of the almost 100 000 visits to this listing less than 4% have commented and far far less have bid. Lesson: Traffic is not everything

2) media is fickle – this was supposed to be on CloseUp tonight, instead it was bumped for some 1 second audio bite from 15 years ago – why? Because it was some cop’s hearsay that he heard a confession in it. Lesson: don’t rely on the the media for free marketing

3) You might have the idea, others may monetize it: this chap created an auction, the questions came in resulting in him spending hours writing comments. He’ll sell his washing machine lets say he gets $500, he has a 10 day auction thats $12.50 an hour (assuming 4 hours a day for 10 days). Mr Vintage took his idea, will pay him (according to their site, $200 + $100 voucher) … they only have to sell say 15 shirts to cover that. Lesson: you might have the idea, but others (may) actually have the means to make the real $$ – think outside the square, and DON’T be scared to make great partnerships.

4) Don’t be scared to look for the side lines. The fellow here wanted to sell a washing machine – it’s currently at $150. He threw up some dino pics to support it, he’s selling them for charity they are already WELL in excess of the original auction. Blogger.com grew out of a side project, Twitter.com also grew out of a side project. Lesson: don’t overlook the small side projects (some call these distractions) .. these could actually be bigger than the original idea

Just my 2 cents