Cards Against Humanity’s “$5 More” Black Friday Sale

http://maxistentialist.tumblr.com/post/68844686496/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday

by alexcason • 13 years ago

169 37 13 years ago

maxistentialist.tumblr.com

hanief• 13 years ago

david and goliath by gladwell is indeed a good motivational/justificational book for underdog or lean startup aiming at big corporate.

booruguru• 13 years ago

Why is he being voted down? The book is referenced in the article.

wmeredith3• 13 years ago

I can't speak for anyone else, but I auto-downvote comments that lack proper punctuation/grammar. It's a fast indicator of quality discourse.

Nicholas_C2• 13 years ago

There's been a pretty negative Gladwell vibe on HN lately.

jbrooksuk• 13 years ago

I bought the UK version one day before Black Friday. Well worth the full price as it's kept me amused every day since!

cup2• 13 years ago

I wonder if the controversy surrounding their dickwolves criticsm and potential hypocrisy has damaged their branding. I doubt it but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

DanTheManPR• 13 years ago

That's Penny Arcade you're thinking of.

cup2• 13 years ago

Im actually referencing this incident I read about on reddit:

http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...

dkersten• 13 years ago

The problem with the dickwolves thing wasn't the dickwolves joke itself, but rather how they responded when people got upset. There is nothing wrong with cards against humanity criticising penny arcade for this while having similar content, as long as they don't respond similarly if people get upset over their content.

maaaats• 13 years ago

And to me it isn't hypocrisy, since the main argument to CAH against Penny Arcade was that they screwed their expo over by drawing that kind of negative attention to it.

contextual2• 13 years ago

I ran a similar experiment with Rejection Therapy a year or so ago. I used big red "DON'T BUY" purchase buttons and sales went up slightly.

Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.

applecore• 13 years ago

Why did you take them down? :)

contextual2• 13 years ago

It's a bizarre and complicated story I hope to one day tell, but not today.

PaulJoslin• 13 years ago

I think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of.

The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.

On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.

Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.

This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.

TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.

nollidge2• 13 years ago

This is basically useless advice. If you're too different people will think it's weird, or just being different for different's sake, and they'll still pass you up.

The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.

Nicholas_C2• 13 years ago

because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.

Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.

sgarman• 13 years ago

I think the real key here is have a product people want. After that you have a lot more room to take chances in marketing without it blowing up. They even conclude that they don't believe people even cared when purchasing from amazon that day.

kevingadd• 13 years ago

The CAH crew has a history of running cute little business experiments like this. One I remember from earlier this year:

https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...

monksy2• 13 years ago

Just as a historical note: Max also complained that they didn't get much money out of PAX (where they did this) compared to the amount of money they spent. [They made their booth VERY elaborate]

OneOneOneOne• 13 years ago

I think CAH understands their customer quite well. Others applying this direct approach could be perceived as dicks.

interstitial2• 13 years ago

dickwolves.

xiaoma• 13 years ago

Interesting to contrast this with Cards for Humanity, which links the same offensive cards with the goal of donations to charity.

http://cfh.io

Cards Against Humanity’s “$5 More” Black Friday Sale

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