How 2 Publicity Hunters got $200,000 in Free Advertising and Failed to Make One Dime!

It's a situation any business owner would kill for. Two intrepid Georgia hikers were featured on every major news network, like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX. They were mentioned on radio stations across the country and quickly become the topic of water cooler conversations nationwide. So what did the gentlemen do to gain such notoriety? They announced the discovery of a BIGFOOT CARCASS and offered it up for examination.
There story of a BIGFOOT discovery changed several times- a felon shot it, they stumbled across it while hiking, or someone brought it to them. No matter, they approached a known Sasquatch enthusiast who offered them money and agreed to promote their find.
Suddenly the duo was everywhere and stirring up controversy with their claims. Skeptics raced to decry the discovery and it turns out, the naysayers were right in their nay saying. The body of the Skunk Ape, the Bigfoot frozen in a block of ice was nothing more than a Halloween costume stuffed with blood, guts and entrails.
The hikers were hoaxers and the huffy crypto-zoological community had enough. While the promoter was left to try to recover some shred of credibility, the world laughed at the prank and prepared to keep spreading rumors and legends of the Bigfoot. The men who started it all disappeared.
The hoax creating hikers may even face charges!
But they failed.
Go visit their website, and however many people did during those seven to ten turbulent troubled days and you see why they failed.
What were visitors motivated to do?
Creepy music, poor design, cheesy crappy pictures and an expedition to the hoax site all for sale.
Poor poor poor choices all around.
And ONE REALLY BIG MISSED OPPORTUNITY.
But instead of cataloging what was wrong with their site, let's focus on what they did right.
They took an enduring popular urban legend (Or Bigfoot is a real creature, depends on which side of the fence you fall on) and generated a TON of FREE PUBLICITY around it. They ranked NUMBER ONE or TOP FIVE in all Search Engine rankings and created a national (some would say worldwide) conversation.
Can you CREATE an event that gets people talking about you? Can you get your book, movie, your website in front of millions of television viewers, or radio listeners and drive them to your site?
Do you have a website; a newsletter or book of stories or something to give away to entice those visitors to stay in touch with you?
What our two misguided pranksters should have done is created a loss leader type product to build a customer list. They could have printed up tee shirts, or even better, shot an expedition DVD and given it away for free, just pay shipping and handling. People who purchased the initial product would have become the customer base for an expanded collection of back end products.
Back end products could have ranged from a DVD/book package, to speaking engagements on how to hunt, to a guided Sasquatch Safari tour!
They really missed the boat.
These BIGFOOT HUNTERS with their SKUNK APE carcass FAILED to capitalize on this GREAT OPPORTUNITY.
It seems like the whole ordeal was half though out- incomplete.
A smart web or business owner should plan out a publicity event, but must be prepared to follow through on the business the publicity generates.
Failure to build the business will turn it into a carcass as dead as the Georgia Bigfoot two hunters pretended to find.