I think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of.
The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.
On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.
Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.
This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.
TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.
This is basically useless advice. If you're too different people will think it's weird, or just being different for different's sake, and they'll still pass you up.
The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.
Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.
I think the real key here is have a product people want. After that you have a lot more room to take chances in marketing without it blowing up. They even conclude that they don't believe people even cared when purchasing from amazon that day.
The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.
On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.
Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.
This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.
TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.