alex deherrera

I wasn’t at work to witness this, but over the last week someone has been coming in and stuffing the pants in our women’s section with fake one hundred dollar bills. While I haven’t actually seen them, I was told that they looked real from a distance but up close they were obviously fake. The people who find the fake currency are suppose to go to a website and from there I assume it leads them on a some sort of online adventure where eventually they find the product that was suppose to be advertised. This is all a guess, of course, because I have no idea what the website is or what steps you need to take to complete it. I was told that the flash image on the website was a lady gagging (I have no idea what she was gagging on) and because the person visiting the site was at an Apple store, he didn’t continue on.

I don’t know much about marketing, but who was the intended audience for this? The people that shop at the store I work for certainly would not qualify. Web savvy isn’t exactly how I would describe people who shop just to save five dollars on a crappy pair of pants. Not only that, but I know I would be pissed off if I had a brief moment of elation thinking I found a hundred dollars only to discover it was fake. I understand the point of viral marketing is to get people to spread your product through word-of-mouth, but a quick Google search revealed nothing about this. I still don’t even know what it was trying to sell. In a week I will forget all about this scheme, and outside of this blog post, I don’t think I will bother to tell anyone else about it because even while reading what I am writing I am finding that this isn’t even interesting. The genius behind this viral marketing needs to read Seth Godin and plan their strategy much better next time.