buzzmarketing

Following on the theme of guerrilla marketing, here's another golden nugget that is sure to impress. A guy named Mark Hughes apparently put Ebay's Half.com website "on the map" by renaming a town in Oregon from Halfway to Half.com. It makes me wonder how many other towns there are out there with .com in their name - I would assume that there aren't too many. And I'd like to see it stay that way, but I guess I'm just old fashioned. On the bright side, at least he is renaming inanimate objects and not other people's children. But I wonder how the people of the town felt about it. I'm sure Ebay wasn't complaining, though, as his tactics helped to bring in a colossal eight million registered users in just under three years.

Most successful guerrilla marketing campaigns seem to straddle a thin line between brilliant and ridiculous. Hughes is now offering his uncanny brand of guerrilla marketing expertise as a professional speaker. He also wrote a successful book on the topic titled "Buzzmarketing".

Now I'm off to look for sleepy towns that might be receptive to the idea of being renamed so that I can gain some readership for this blog. So if you seen "Occasional Editorialist, Wyoming" on your maps in a year or so, you'll know where I got the idea.