I think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of.<p>The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.<p>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.<p>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.<p>This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.<p>TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.
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.
The CAH crew has a history of running cute little business experiments like this. One I remember from earlier this year:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689/photo/1" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...</a>
Interesting to contrast this with Cards <i>for</i> Humanity, which links the same offensive cards with the goal of donations to charity.<p><a href="http://cfh.io" rel="nofollow">http://cfh.io</a>
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.<p>Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.