5/11/2007

Getting "the underpants"

Back in 1998-1999, Internet advertising was beginning to explode. Tons of start-up companies were getting countless amounts of money. Most business models during the time period revolved around generating revenue from advertising. After companies received this money - they consistently needed to prove something to the VCs in order to position themselves in hopes to sell the business to someone else. This began the incredible demand for "registrations." Companies believed that if they merely grew their registered user base (regardless of why users were registering), they would be able to sell that to someone else for large sums of money...

While working at Beyond Interactive, we often represented many of these types of companies. Several of us, and most notably "the big daddy" began to grow skeptical of the aforementioned business plans. But ... given that our job was to merely obtain registered users -- we did just that -- and we did it well. Whether it was using gimmicks like contests and promotions -- or only having 3 or 4 required fields to counts as a registrations -- we got our customers registered users. (To be clear - our clients always knew the tactics we were using - and always signed off on them)

So - what's the point of this "underpants" post?? Well - in 1998 - there was a South Park episode clip that is almost the perfect representation of the business practices of a lot of these .com companies. As we all know - most of these companies ran out of money shortly thereafter. As I found the clip randomly on Youtube - I felt the need to share. It's about a minute long - and worth the watch - especially if you were in the industry and the time.

1 comment:

Greg March said...

Get your advertising heroine together. CUZ WE GOING TO GET THE UNDERPANTS!!!

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