Gorrilla marketing on the web
Ok so we have alot of volcanoes in New Zealand. One new website startup www.mintshot.co.nz decided to simulate an eruption using smoke flares.
"The publicity stunt was lead by mintshot director Marc Ellis, who along with fellow directors Ben Hickey and Nick Dalton ascended Rangitoto in the early hours of the morning and using smoke flares simulated an eruption of the extinct volcano."
"The stunt has been a covert operation for all involved. A behind the scenes account of this guerilla marketing stunt will be revealed on 20/20 (TV2) at 9.30pm tonight (Thursday 15th November)."
Aparently they wanted 100,000 signups in the first 48 hrs. This is in a country of 3.5 million. I wonder how they did.
Users have reported several problems with the site, including password failures and the site also went down several times yesterday.
Members of Mintshot bid for items with their “mintshot dollars”, earned by watching advertisements on the site and answering questions about them.
There have also been allegations of cheating. The problem seems lie with the ‘Minttick’ game. The aim of the noughts and crosses style game is to collect as many ticks as possible. If you reveal a cross, the game is over. For each Minttick game that is played, $20 Mintshot dollars are deducted from player’s account balance.
Game scores have been noticed to be unattainably high. On average a high score for the challenge could be expected to be around 20-22 points, but there have been examples of over 100 for $2000 worth of Bonus Bonds, 65points for $2250 worth of car audio and 70 points for a $2300 Denon Hi-Fi.
The website is maintained by 20 staff working in India and is understood that the cheating is happening because the website code is easily visible. A leading bidder makes light of this point through their username is ‘GetANewWebCoder!’
Hahahaha Yeah I have to admit I thought about the chances of dubious people doing things like this when money is invol\ved. To tell you the truth I have been less than impressed with the site on a technical evaluation, and it almost feels like it was thrown together in a realy hurry over a joomla base.
Hmm – I think about it and I’ll write something more later.