OK, folks are going to continue to miss the point, but here's one last attempt:
Sparkfun improved their online market capability. They did so because their customers gave them money.
After improving their capability, to what they determined would meet their day-to-day operations, they had $100,000 to give back to their customers.
They could have spent this money on an additional set of servers that wouldn't see real use during day to day operations. They could have just kept the money. They could have given the money to their employees. They could have spent it in traditional advertising.
Instead, they went outside of the box. They spent the money on a bizarre advertising campaign (Seriously, let's give $100k back to the community, and maybe get some new customers).
Bitch and moan all you want, but what would your "Optimal" solution be? Something that attempts to benefit both the company and the customers.
They did what they could. I don't understand why people would complain about not getting stuff for free when there was an expressed and very specific limitation set in place - first come, first serve, $100k limit, good luck. Personally, I actually forgot to even try :(
This was a brilliant piece of work. I know some extremely vocal people are really annoyed. However, a bunch of us (6, no one got through!) had an absolute blast with this (though we almost got tossed out of a Starbucks, and had some interesting questions from the police).
It's like the good old days in the dot coms. 25 year old employees who don't know the $100,000 could have been their bonuses, gigantic marketing departments, partying, & of course, women.
Comments
Sparkfun improved their online market capability. They did so because their customers gave them money.
After improving their capability, to what they determined would meet their day-to-day operations, they had $100,000 to give back to their customers.
They could have spent this money on an additional set of servers that wouldn't see real use during day to day operations. They could have just kept the money. They could have given the money to their employees. They could have spent it in traditional advertising.
Instead, they went outside of the box. They spent the money on a bizarre advertising campaign (Seriously, let's give $100k back to the community, and maybe get some new customers).
Bitch and moan all you want, but what would your "Optimal" solution be? Something that attempts to benefit both the company and the customers.
Thank you so much!
That is why it is called Spark "FUN"!
Just a thought.
Regards,
TCIII