After two years of videomaking, my friend Sarah and I designed a DVD of my videos which I placed on sale at Lulu.com for $8.75. However, I took a rather nontraditional approach with this official DVD.
I shared it.
First, I made a torrent of the DVD iso file and made it freely available online. This allowed persons all over the web and around the world to download and burn their own copy of the DVD. Then I pirated my official DVD by making one hundred DVD-R copies. If that wasn’t horrible enough, I then offered to mail one of these pirated copies for free to the first one hundred viewers who sent me their addresses.
In summary, this free DVD project allowed over 100 people to receive a product that was on sale elsewhere. That’s enough to make a businessman commit hara-kiri.
But check this out. When we talk about sharing we’re also talking about spreading and the free DVDs spread to countries outside my own. I mailed free DVDs to the following countries:
- USA
- Alaska
- Norway
- England
- Switzerland
- Netherlands
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- Australia
- France
- Singapore
- Brazil
If I had restricted my marketing plan to merely sitting upon my throne of copyrightness and balling out my song of “One DVD for $8.75!”, do you think there would be as long a spread list? Not in your life.
This is where the old school businessman tries to make a point. The traditional logic would view the free DVD project like this:
- I spent $150 buying material and mailing to overseas addresses.
- I haven’t made even half of that in DVD sales.
- Therefore, the project was a failure.
Obviously, if my intent was to immediately generate revenue, then the project would have been a failure indeed. But with a name like “the free DVD project” you kinda get the idea that my primary intent wasn’t income, but outgo. For this, we use a different logic:
- Was I able to reach viewers who wouldn’t have requested a paid DVD? Yes.
- Was I able to reach offline viewers who aren’t able to view the streaming videos? Yes.
- Therefore, the project was a success.
Amber received one of my free DVDs and she sent me this note. It illustrates the principle of chickenpox: share it once, and it will keep on being shared.
“One of my friends (who I had hooked on your vids) only had dial up and so were sad they could not watch your vids on their whim. So, when I got your DVD, I promptly loaned it to them at the first opportunity, for which she was exceedingly grateful. […] THEN. I was at a party with her and another DG fan the other night and I found out that she had been showing the DVD to whoever would watch it and has pretty much all that college kids at her church hooked on your vid!
Isn’t that awesome!? She said she was going to look into buying a DVD of her own.
And we ended up spending an hour watching your vids at the party.
Obviously, selling DVDs and making money off your work isn’t evil. However, the focus on numerical statistics too often shadows the value of human connection. By mailing free DVDs, I was able to connect with my audience in a positive and fresh way, and that always pays off.
Suggested reading: Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
Filed under Point of view
Isaiah
My gut reaction to your post:
Hey, Daniel *finally* updated his blog!
But seriously, you hit a very important point. “Stupid” techniques are easily the most beneficial in the long run. Marketing is really more about people and the way they interact with other people than money. At least the folks over at FaceBook are hitting the tip of the iceberg on that one. That and Alaska isn’t a country. Last I checked, anyways.