Though fortune cookies usually are not the subject of foodie attention, I do feel inspired to pass along an
enjoyable story that lies at the intersection of my interests in food and
customer acquisition strategies for online businesses. Yesterday Josh Kopelman
regaled my colleagues and I with some of the guerilla buzz marketing stunts
pulled off by his startup, Half.com (which in 1999 famously paid a town called Halfway
in Oregon to change its name to Half.com).
Half.com was acquired by eBay in
2000, but even after that retained its heritage as a scrappy startup looking to
find high-leverage marketing techniques. Mark Hughes, who was the VP Marketing at Half.com, somehow learned
that:
- 97%
of people given a fortune cookie will read their fortune
- 67%
of those fortunes get read aloud to the people they’re eating with
- The
fortune cookie industry is highly concentrated, with a few companies
controlling most of the U.S. market (so dealing with only one, or a few, bakeries gives wide distribution)
Thus was born fortune cookie
marketing! Half.com stuffed $5 coupons
inside fortune cookies that were distributed to restaurants all over the
country. To make the deal even sweeter,
Half.com only had to pay the fortune cookie company for redeemed coupons ($2.50
each). Josh gleefully recounted, “I was happy to
acquire customers at $7.50 a head all day long.” Mark is still practicing fortune cookie
marketing and other creative techniques at his firm, Buzzmarketing.
Wow, that's a great story. Where do I go to book my fortune cookie marketing campaign? Where is the AdWords of fortune cookie marketing?
Posted by: Chris Yeh | July 13, 2006 at 12:47 PM
My understanding is that Mark Hughes of Buzzmarketing has long-term contracts with several of the fortune cookie bakeries, which collectively control a big chunk of the U.S. market. So you can ask Mark to help you book your fortune cookie marketing campaign! http://www.buzzmarketing.com/
Posted by: Tom Cole | July 13, 2006 at 03:47 PM