Welcome to The Elfster Podcast, brought to you by Elfster, a gifting platform that strengthens social bonds by increasing acts of generosity. In each episode, we sit down with an expert to share stories about digital retail trends and talk about the future of e-commerce. Our host is Peter Imburg, the CEO and Founder of Elfster, who has dedicated his career to connecting communities, audiences and brands.
In this episode of the Elfster Podcast we speak with Mark Hughes, the Chairman and Co-Foundrer of C3 Metrics, an attribution platform solving viewability, X-Device, programmatic, digital & TV attribution. He’s here with us because 15 years ago he was the mastermind of an innovative marketing campaign that got headlines all over the world. Learn more about Peter and Mark here:
Peter ImburgPeter Imburg:
All right. Hi, this is Peter Imburg at the Elfster podcast. I'm the founder and CEO of Elfster. And I am thrilled today to have renowned marketing guru and thought leader, Mark Hughes with us today. Hi, Mark.
Mark Hughes:
Hey, Peter.
Peter Imburg:
And the reason we've got Mark with us today is that just about exactly, 15 years ago today, and for a period of time, in 2005, Mark was the mastermind of a campaign that made headlines all over the world. The tiny town of Santa, Idaho was proposed and voted to be renamed to SecretSanta.com, Idaho. And 2005 is so long ago, putting that all in perspective, I believe Elon Musk was, probably, at PayPal still, while working for eBay. I think that the Slack guys had just exited to Yahoo selling their Flickr application. Twitter wasn't even started, and Mark Zuckerberg was, probably, still in his dorm room contemplating moving out to California. So this was such a world away from where we are today. And making absolutely buzz headlines all around the world was the renaming of Santa, Idaho to SecretSanta.com, Idaho.
Peter Imburg:
SecretSanta.com was the start of Franco and Paolo Yuvinco and they had teamed up to launch a huge marketing campaign, Mark Hughes was going to be the mastermind behind that. So Mark, with backdrop, tell me, if you will, about how you came to be aware of SecretSanta.com and Franco Yuvinco.
Mark Hughes:
Well, I'd been consulting for a company that Franco Yuvinco was working for and in the course of it, got to Paolo pretty well, as well, and we were just of the same mind, entrepreneurial performance marketers, but also at the same time, appreciated the big idea marketing. And they introduced me to Secret Santa and I thought it was just a wonderful piece of technology to make gift giving easier and take it out of the hat and crumpled pieces of paper, and whatnot. And especially, for families and nowadays workplaces that are remote wide today, it's not as likely that you can crumple a piece of paper up or fold a piece of paper up and toss it in a hat. Everything's Zoom and remote and whatnot. So I was just tickled with the technology of Secret Santa, and they said, "Hey, do you have any ideas? And what can you do?"
Mark Hughes:
And a bit earlier, actually, about five years earlier, and again, as you mentioned, this is all pre-social media. Zuckerberg was probably still stuck in a dirty dorm room with a dirty microwave. And so, I said, "Well, I wonder if I can make lightning strike twice." And, Peter, when I say that, just five years before I'd had the privilege to be the VP of marketing and, I guess, PR for a company called, half.com, which we later sold to eBay for north of $300 million. And we were in a situation back then, we were in stealth mode, we didn't really... there was no marketing going on at the time and we needed to launch the brand. That was what Franco and Paolo were interested in doing themselves, although the domain name was up and the technology was working, they never put a big push behind it. So we kicked around the idea of perhaps...
Mark Hughes:
And half.com, I renamed a town called, Halfway, Oregon, a few states over to Half.com, Oregon. And it was my boss, and hats off to my boss back then, Josh Kopelman, who now runs a venture capital fund called, First Round VC, and he pushed me to my edge, so hats off to him. And there was some spreadsheet math behind it, in terms of, "Hey, you can spend some marketing dollars on acquiring customers and search would cost this and display would cost this." And there was this one line item called PR word of mouth, and that was the line item that had little cost associate and potentially a big return.
Mark Hughes:
So I set out, back then, five years prior to naming Santa, Idaho to SecretSanta.com, Idaho, I proceeded to go and rename Halfway, Oregon to Half.com, Oregon, and, boy, we created quite a stir of controversy. And it was very hard. You have people from the west and some kind of no name dot com, at least at the time, from the East Coast, "Who are these Yankees to come in and rename our town and take our namesake? That's un-American, perhaps." And lots of different opinions, but certainly a lot controversy. It was very audacious. I think the last time anyone had done it was, perhaps, in New Mexico in like 1935, and I forget the name of the town there. I think it was the name of a game show.
Mark Hughes:
But it was an interesting idea, we were trying to, literally, put our name on the map. And then, I said, "Well, why don't we... let's just do that. Let's put our brand on the map." Back then, that's what I set out to do, and convinced a town of population 350, Halfway, Oregon to rename their town. And it got us on... We had our pick of all the TV networks, so we picked, at that time, Katie Couric and The Today show. We gave them the exclusive, if they would do the story with our CEO Josh Kopelman on the day that we launched.
Mark Hughes:
We were everywhere. We were on the cover of USAToday.com, we were in the China Press, Czechoslovakian Press, everywhere. We later got named one of the top 100 Time moment, internet moments of history, period. And so that was a wild ride. We sold the company. We caught the attention of eBay, very quickly after the renaming of the town, and then we sold the company within six months, for north of $300 million to eBay.
Mark Hughes:
So it's one of those things Peter, where you think, "Was it just a one hit wonder like Six Pence None the Richer or pick the name of your band, and your hit song? Or could you possibly, with SecretSanta.com and Santa, Idaho, make lightning strike twice?" And so, it was one-
Peter Imburg:
Well, I know... I will say, from sitting where I was, and at that time a competitor, now friend, of Franco's, I saw this story everywhere. It really took off. I believe I was traveling internationally, and I saw it on a CNN video board, and it had really taken off. So you're making lightning strike, it seems, a second time.
Mark Hughes:
We really did. And there's an element of luck to it, certainly, but as the saying goes, "You make your own luck." And it was a gusher of a event and a story. And I think the numbers... And I'll be happy to go into some of the more quirky stories of Santa, Idaho and some of the people that we met. But the numbers, just at a high level, it went from almost nothing, I would say, not nothing, but word of mouth, just regular, "Hey, there's this cool site secretsanta.com that makes everything easier. Got White Elephant, Yankee Swap, all that stuff." And I think it was maybe... Franco's probably got the numbers, but I think it was maybe, a couple 100 people a day, and, Peter, after the news hit on CNN, word in public radio, and then the Associated Press, in a very short amount of time, it went from a couple 100 a day, think, to over a 100,000 people per day signing up.
Peter Imburg:
Oh, wow.
Mark Hughes:
I didn't... It's kind of funny, because I'm out there trudging around shaking hands and, proverbially, kissing babies, and having coffee with boys and whatnot, and in a remote area with not very good internet access and almost always, I come back to New York, where Franco and Paolo were, and then, I get the real data. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh." So, yeah, it was a gusher of an event. And it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun at the same time.
Peter Imburg:
Now, I recall it, and this was almost a slow water drip torture for me at the time, is that this story went on and on and on. First, there was a suggestion of the possibility, and then, a vote of the county leaders, and then, the public hearing... Well, there was maybe a public hearing, then a vote, and then, a ceremony. It went on for weeks, and it stayed in the top of the headlines all that time.
Mark Hughes:
It's like a reality show unfolding in real life over six weeks or so. And it's the same thing that happened before, five years earlier. The intricacies of it were the township of Santa, Idaho, actually, was not incorporated, itself. I think it actually was incorporated, but the ruling body of Santa, Idaho, within the county, the only body with any authority was the Santa Water and Sewer district commission. Essentially, they acted as the town selection and Mayor, et cetera, so it was a very odd body that would have the vote. And, you're exactly right Peter, I think I made about three trips, separately, from the East Coast, flying into either Seattle or Spokane, and then renting a car and going past Coeur d'Alene, Idaho all the way in there, with very bad reception. It was very similar the five years earlier, in terms of just, the audacity of it first of all, and then the head scratching in Santa, Idaho, "You want to do what?"
Mark Hughes:
And they were like, "Why do you want to do this?" I'm like, "Well, it's really just a big press event. We're trying to get attention for SecretSanta.com." And they're like, "That's it, there's no catch?" "Nope. That's about it." And I remember the very first meeting I had was with the guy who ran the very small office of the Chamber of Commerce for Santa, Idaho. And he was like, "Okay, so you did this before in Halfway, Oregon, Half.com, Oregon, so you're got a track record here. Okay." And he did a little internet research, he's like, "Okay, I'm in." But then he's like, "Now, we've got to get everyone in." And so, then the journey begins and I don't know if it's like the Apostle Paul trying to convince other people, of course, probably not, but it becomes a humanization, if you will, of an idea, of a very audacious idea.
Mark Hughes:
So people then read about it in the small town newspapers, word of mouth travels fast. This, again, before social media. Word of mouth travels fast in small towns, and then, there's confusion, perhaps, there's anger, and then there's puzzlement, then there's fear, and a whole host of emotions. And then, the process is actually, somewhat similar, again, five years, then what I want to do is find influencers, and who are the people in Santa, Idaho that everyone else looks up to, and "If they say Bob is okay with it, then I guess I'm okay with it." Or, "If they say Mary's okay with it, then I'm okay with it." And in Santa, Idaho it was a whole host of figures and you can't nearly predict who it would be, it's not always the Police Chief or whatever it is.
Mark Hughes:
So I went around and humanized the idea, just saying, "Hey, my name's Mark Hughes, and I'm the guy trying to rename the town, and what do you think about it." I would meet people like a guy named Joe Croft, and Joe Croft and his wife, what they do in Santa, Idaho, is they are book people. They make hand sewn books. They rehab old leather book bound books that have experienced damage through just age or water damage or mildew, whatever, and then, they have new books that people want custom bound. And so, I would meet these crafts people like Joe Croft. I meet Gidget McQueen, who's just very involved in the community. I got invited to a dance at the town, it wasn't the town hall, but it was the old dance hall, on the second floor of one of their big buildings, so I went to the dance.
Mark Hughes:
And I would meet, strangely enough in Santa, Idaho, there's a guy named Jack Frost, I kid you not. His real name is Jack Frost. So I meet Jack Frost. I would talk to Gidget McQueen. I would talk to people who were semi-professional rifle people, who competed in competition for how accurate you can shoot a rifle and an antique handgun and all sorts of stuff. The people in town are pretty cool, actually, and it's very different from perhaps the coasts that we sometimes find ourselves, or at least a lot of the population find themselves in. And so you do get a different flavor and you talk about things... On the East Coast and the West Coast you never talk about how slow your internet access is, but they talk about it there, because it's a big deal there. So there's issues and problems and concerns that you don't necessarily think about. I even encountered... One of the people, who was an influencer, Peter, was an Elvis impersonator. Now-
Peter Imburg:
Wow.
Mark Hughes:
... this Elvis impersonator happened to be one of the mailmen in town, and so, he was a US postal worker, but when I met him, and everybody's like, "Yeah, you got to go meet him." And when I met him, he came with his wife and his kid dressed in his Elvis impersonation outfit, big white, I guess, it's a jumpsuit, with all his rhinestone studs and whatnot, and we just talked. And I said, "How did you get into this?" And he told me the story about how his father was a pastor and didn't like rock and roll music and he had to hide the rock and roll music from his dad. Yet, this Elvis impersonator is very religious himself, he met his wife in church, and so, Oregon Public Radio got a sniff of it, and they started doing a story on it. I think, obviously, the local press started working on it, and then, CNN picked up on it. But it's just really weird, I encountered my very first ghost in Santa, Idaho as well.
Peter Imburg:
That's interesting. You encountered a ghost.
Mark Hughes:
Yeah. And I would never say this before going to Santa, Idaho, but afterwards, I now believe in ghosts. There was a gentleman by the name of Fred, I forget his last, but Fred was a gentleman who actually built most of Santa, Idaho. He trained in a lot of raw materials to build roads and buildings and whatnot, he was the richest man in Santa, Idaho. And his personal home is now an inn on the top of the hill in Santa, Idaho. Now, I wouldn't consider it a mansion, like you might see in Texas or something, but it was a pretty big house, and converted to an inn, and when I was there, in the winter, there was no one else staying at the inn, so the innkeeper said, "Do you have a choice of rooms?" I said, "I don't know. What's the best room?" And they said, "Well, the best room is Fred's room, who built the house and who built the town." I said, "Okay, well, I guess I'm going to stay in Fred's room."
Mark Hughes:
I go upstairs and Fred's room, the door's open and everything, and I take my big backpack and I put it all down, and I close the door, and I'm washing up in the bathroom, and all of a sudden the door just opens immediately. And I'm like... Your first instinct, if you're washing up in the bathroom, so to speak, is I'm a little embarrassed. I'm in the bathroom here, and the door to the room opens, but, obviously, there's no one in the whole place, so what's there to be embarrassed about? I was like, "Okay, all right, well, let me just make sure I close this door properly now." And so, I closed the door proper. I make sure the lock stays, all that stuff, and I think, I'm in bed either reading a book or on my laptop, and low and behold, that door just pops right open and opens right out of the blue. And I'm like, "This is weird."
Mark Hughes:
And then I get this sense or whiff of a cigar, and I'm like, "What is that smell? Who I smoking? Is the innkeeper, is that lady smoking a cigar? This place is really weird." And then, I'm like, "Okay, whatever." I'm like, "It's really weird. Hey, I'm the guy who renames towns. Well, that's not weird. Of course, that's weird." I'm like, "Yeah, whatever." The next morning, it's a bed and breakfast type of inn, there's a small spread down there and the older innkeeper, where you chit chat a little bit, and I asked her about that. I said, "Hey, I got a smell, a sense of cigars. Is there anyone here? Is there anyone else who could have popped in later than me?" And she said, "Oh, no, that's Fred." I said, "What?" She said, "Oh, no, that's Fred. His ghost I think is still around here, and there's been some pretty strange things that have happened." And she told me a few stories.
Mark Hughes:
And then, I reciprocated and I told her the story about the door opening twice. And she just kind of smiled and she said, "That's probably Fred." And so, when you decide to rename a town, you’ve got to be pretty open-minded and you're going to encounter a lot of things you never expected. It's pretty fun, but at the same time, there are definitely moments where you walk up to people and you have a conversation with people, and they're not that friendly. Or they're very reserved. I remember, even back in Halfway, Oregon, when we were renaming the town there. Boy, it was... I was not a welcomed visitor. I remember, one of the "influencers" was the bank manager at US Bank, named Julie, and I was introduced by the mayor around, and I said, "Hey, I'm Mark Hughes, and here to rename... I'm the guy behind all this controversy." And I said, "So what do you think? Do you like it? You don't like it? Do you have any questions?" And she's like, "I don't like the idea."
Mark Hughes:
And there are a lot of conversations that go like that, and there's... it's a little disheartening, but at the same time, you just kind of hang in there like Muhammad Ali, you just do a little rope-a-dope and you take the punches, and you just see if you can wait it out. And low and behold, some of... in fact, a lot of the time, people change their minds. And that bank manager, Julie, she's like, "I met that guy, it's not so bad. What's the worst that could happen?" But I tell you Peter, one of the things we got really lucky with Santa, Idaho and SecretSanta.com for the town renaming, and this was just by sheer luck, so there's... You're probably familiar and your podcast listeners are probably familiar with Dish TV. It's like the largest or second largest satellite TV company-
Peter Imburg:
Yes, of course.
Mark Hughes:
... in the world. So Dish, they decided, for some reason, I don't know why, and it was just a weird timing thing. Right around the same time that the renaming of Santa, Idaho to SecretSanta.com, Idaho was unfolding, and, again, kind of like a slow reality show, live, unfolding in front of you for six weeks. In that period, Dish satellite TV decided to rename some town called Clark, Texas, I don't why they picked Clark, they should at least have picked a town with Dish or Wind Dish or something, some version or dish or cup or saucer or something. But they were attempting to rename the town of Clark, Texas to Dish, Texas, which they also succeeded at. But it was kind of viewed as a little bit of a me too, because previously, I'd renamed Halfway, Oregon to Half.com, Oregon, and now we'd started with SecretSanta.com, Idaho in Santa, Idaho, and it was a little viewed as an also ran.
Mark Hughes:
And I think it just wasn't as fanciful. There's that phrase, what's in a name? Well, everything's in a name. But I think the combined energy of that, not just a fun cool website like SecretSanta.com with some really neat technology that no one ever really thought of, but here's this big, huge publicly traded company trying to take a page from the fanciful nature of doing some different things, rather than blowing a bunch of cash on a Super Bowl ad.
Peter Imburg:
Right. Well, I want to ask you, and you mentioned some of the pushback, I think Franco had mentioned to me that... did you have a documentary filmmaker go to town with you with some barroom scenes and so forth?
Mark Hughes:
We did. I started out with my little Sony Handycam, and then someone else got interested in the project and joined with another camera and whatnot. And we started... We thought, "This time renaming Santa, Idaho, wouldn't it be cool to have a documentary, literally, from the inside view of how it was all done. Much like, let's say, Aerosmith, the making of the album from Aerosmith, and the cool inside views. And so, we started to do that, and one of the people from the entertainment industry, who took a fancy to it, was a guy named Jamie Gold. And Jamie Gold was a Hollywood agent, he represented James Gandolfini from the Sopranos and Jimmy Fallon slept on his couch for six months out in Los Angeles, before Jimmy Fallon became Jimmy Fallon. And so, he was an agent just kind of in between things. He's like, "Hey, this sounds pretty cool, let me get involved in it."
Mark Hughes:
We would send him some footage and he would start to bulldoze edit, if you will, some of the footage, and then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum, so to speak, Jamie Gold was, at the time, when we were shooting just the raw footage, he decided to enter the World Series of Poker, because he was a little bit of a poker aficionado. So he said, "All right, I'm going to try and win it." I don't play poker, but apparently, it's a big deal, and he became the champion. Not one of these regional things, but he went all the way, and he won millions and millions of dollars, and came out of nowhere. I think part of it was, at least for him, no one understood his style of play, so he could hide a lot. So then he won the World Series of Poker, and he's like, "Hey, you know that documentary we were working on, I think I'm going to go be a professional poker play, so see you."
Mark Hughes:
So we had all this footage, and we still have all this footage, and maybe, someday, when I've got a little bit more time, we'll resurrect it, maybe, not 15 years later, but 30 years later, who knows. But there's some inside footage of the renaming of Santa, Idaho, somewhere on the shelf, so to speak. But, yeah, it's a lot of different, weird, tangential stories associated with this, but it's not for the faint of heart to go rename a town, and also, being first or, perhaps, second, you get away with it, but the third or the fourth or the fifth time, it's like, "That's not new." News is new once or maybe twice, but, yeah.
Peter Imburg:
Right. Oh, well, that is fascinating and to encounter the ghost of the town founder, among all the other personalities there to persuade a town to participate in something like this is absolutely not for the faint of heart. I think you kind of answered what my next question was going to be, which is about how you'd compare the success, obviously, there's the outcome of selling Half.com to eBay for an extraordinary sum of money, but just from the PR standpoint and those 100s of thousands of people every day registering, how did you feel the outcomes in those two really compared? And then how are things different today compared to, maybe, the playbook you had for sparking a story 15 years ago.
Mark Hughes:
Well, Peter, I'll take the second question first, in terms of the playbook. I think the playbook now versus then is perhaps characterized best by the social medias impact on the world. Again, when we were renaming both Halfway, Oregon to Half.com, Oregon, and naming Santa, Idaho to SecretSanta.com, Idaho, social media Facebook... Twitter didn't exist and I think Facebook was only relegated to maybe, I don't know 20 universities or colleges, it wasn't mainstream. So word of mouth and the press pre-social media was far more important, and if you could get Oregon Public Radio and then CNN and then, obviously, the Associated Press, which went all over, for Santa, Idaho. And then, for Halfway, Oregon... The role of the media back then was just magnitudes more.
Mark Hughes:
And I'll tell you a funny story about the Halfway, Oregon, we didn't want it to get out. Meaning, my boss, Josh Kopelman, strategically said, "Hey, listen, we want this all to happen upon the launch of the website." So you would go to Half.com and it would say, "Hey, coming soon." Now, the difference with SecretSanta.com, it was already there, and you could sign up, login, start a Secret Santa gift exchange or Yankee Swap or White Elephant right away, no big deal. But with Half.com we wanted everything to happen upon launch, because we thought, "Gosh, we don't to shoot our ammunition before the targets are in front of us." And so, it actually happened by accident. We started to try to softly and quietly pave the way, meeting the Mayor of Halfway, Oregon, big guy named Ivan Crow, like six foot six, a barrel of a chest. I think probably 270 pounds. The guy could crush me like a mosquito.
Mark Hughes:
We tried to soft pedal it there, because the whole concept of Half.com was a secret, was in stealth mode, and so, one of the first... the very first trip out to Halfway, Oregon, I sat down with Mayor Ivan Crow, and we spent about two hours talking. And so, I popped the question, I'm like, "Well, what do we need to do, next?" And he said, "Well, city council's next." And I'm like, "Okay." And he says, "There just happens to be a city council meeting tonight." And he said, "If you want I'll put you on the agenda, and I'll just let you do your thing. Let you make your case and all that stuff." And I was like, "That's be great." Again, some of this is just luck Peter, and the moon and star, perhaps, tend to align a little bit. I went over to the one bar in town, across the street, and I ordered a sandwich, I didn't have any alcohol or anything. I wanted to be prepped. And then, right before the meeting, I walk right to the city council, and then, it was winter time and there was ice and snow, and I slipped on the ice and fell on back-
Peter Imburg:
Oh, no.
Mark Hughes:
... and hit my head, I was like, "Either this thing is going to..." And I was just looking up at the stars, and it was like, "This is either going to go really well or really bad." And so, we made our case, but, again, we were... it was different with Halfway, Oregon versus Santa, Idaho in that we were trying to keep it under wraps until we were ready. And so, we made the case, and during the city council meeting, there's this guy, who strangely enough happens to be a software coder, he's like... and I mentioned our VC firm, at the time, our boss, Josh Kopelman didn't have his... he created his own VC firm, First Round, subsequently after, but our venture capital firm was kind of known in the East Coast, and I said... people asked me, "How do we know you guys are for real?" I said, "Well, our venture capital firm is XYZ." They later went on to have some notoriety and whatnot.
Mark Hughes:
And then, the software developer... who goes to a city council meeting in Halfway, Oregon? He just happened to go there, and he's like, "I know these guys. This guys for real." We tried to keep it under wraps, and then, I said, "Listen, I hate to push you guys, but I need some early indication if you're interested or not, because I've got to find another town, and the next town on my list is Halfa, Iowa." H-A-L-F-A, Iowa. And as soon as I mentioned that, Peter, everyone kind of... the spirit of competition, "Well, wait a second, I'm not going to lose out to some podunk Halfa town in Iowa." And so, I noticed a little bit of a shift there, and it was just... And on the drive back, I had to drive to Boise, four hours back to Boise to catch a flight back to the East Coast. I think, actually, I might have been going to the West Coast to film some TV commercials. Yeah, I was. All these things, these signals, you wonder if they're from God or from demons or whatever, and on the way back, I missed a deer by about a foot.
Peter Imburg:
Oh, my God.
Mark Hughes:
Icy roads, dark no lights, and I'm like, "Whoa, I don't know what to think of this. Is this, God's on my side, and giving me a helping hand? Or is it, you better watch out, because something bad's going to happen pretty soon." Yeah, we made... I was on my way to film some TV commercials, so we were launching this town renaming and getting that ready. Again, all these things happened. You're out in the middle of nowhere with poor internet access, no one's talking to you, and then, back at HQ, things are happening. With Half.com and Halfway, Oregon, it turns out that the town just low and behold, called the Philadelphia Inquirer, they said, "We have some young man here who claims he's from Half.com, and he's trying to buy our town and rename our town. Could you validate that this company is for real and legit?" And all this stuff like that. The called the City desk at the Philly Inquirer and then-
Peter Imburg:
Oh, my God.
Mark Hughes:
Then the Philly Inquirer goes, and we'd had some local Philadelphia press, our founder, Josh Kopelman had took a company IPO before, so he was known fondly. So they just pick up the phone and call Josh Kopelman and say, "Mr. Kopelman, we just got a phone call from a very small town in Halfway, Oregon, claiming you're trying to buy their town and rename their town. We'd like to have your comment on this. And by the way, is this for real?" He's like, "Listen, I cannot comment on this. I'm going to need to call you back in 10 minutes." And then, he calls me, I'm out in Los Angeles, about to shoot some TV commercials. Strangely enough, one of the TV commercials, one of the stars of the commercials, the lab nerd from NCIS with black hair, Pauley Perrette, before she became famous.
Mark Hughes:
So I'm out there, and Time Magazine just announced that Jeff Bezos was the Man of the year. I left this big corporate career track and I'm just wondering to myself, "What the hell am I doing here? Is this all going to work out? Is this the worst career choice of my life?" You have moments of doubt, and it was just one of the reflective moments of doubt, and then, I get a call from my boss, like, "What the heck is happening? It's not supposed to get out." Now, I'm in big trouble. I'm in really big trouble, because you don't want to shoot all your ammunition before the target's ready. I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know. I'm so sorry." I'm like, "I'm going to get fired." We decide, "Okay, well, let's come clean and let's come out, and let's come out with our own press release, because we're not so sure what the Philadelphia Inquirer will write. Will they write it correctly? What's their side of it?"
Mark Hughes:
So on a Friday afternoon, at like 5:00 or 6 o'clock, we issue a press release, which is the worse thing to do in the world, because no one picks it up, everyone's... happy hour, all that stuff, weekend's here. And the weekend goes by, nothing, nothing, nothing. I'm in trouble. I'm probably going to get fired by my boss, Josh Kopelman. I'm feeling like, "Oh, this is the end." I'm about to spend three quarters of a million dollars filming TV commercials. I'm like, "This is... I'm going to get fired." And then, Monday morning, we're on the way to film TV commercials, in the rental car and all that stuff like that. I look down at my phone and it's ringing, and it's my boss, Josh Kopelman, and I'm like, "Oh. Darn it, here we go."
Mark Hughes:
And it's Monday, I think, 7 o'clock, maybe, West Coast time, 10 o'clock East Coast time, and so, Josh says, "Did you know we were on the cover of USAToday.com?" I'm like, "What?" And he goes, "We have a website, there's nothing on the website." He says, "The traffic on our website is just starting to escalate like nobody's business." He said, "ABC Good Morning America's now doing a story, as we speak." I'm like, "Oh, my..." And I still don't know what to think. I'm like, "Am I getting fired, because we're shooting all our ammunition before the targets are ready?" But he's ecstatic, and he's like, "Let's just run with it." I'm like, "My God, thank God."
Peter Imburg:
Yeah, nothing can get engineering in gear like-
Mark Hughes:
Oh, yeah.
Mark Hughes:
Yeah, because you don't know, and it's very similar to Secret Santa. I'm out here a little bit in the dark just trying to keep my head down and not lose the deal, so to speak. And back at HQ, things are happening, and fortunately, good things are happening. With SecretSanta.com it was going from a couple 100 to 100,000 a day, in terms of users, signing up, not just visiting. You're just doing your thing and if you've got a good CEO, who pushes you to your max and, perhaps, makes you perform better than you yourself think that you can perform. Which, again, hats off to Josh Kopelman and my CEO, right now, here at C3 Metrics does the same thing with me now. The best thing a boss can do is somehow motivate and tease out better performance than you think you can do yourself, and it works. And it's fun when the outcomes are awesome.
Mark Hughes:
Now, Peter I'll get to your comparison question. So that was the second question. I will get your comparison of the events. Now, I have these things after many, many years of renaming towns, life lessons, of all sorts that comparison is the enemy of joy. And that's actually a quote from JFK, and, perhaps, he ripped it off from somebody else. But comparison is the enemy of joy, it is, perhaps, something that I live by more and more. They're two different things, different times, different places. Can the outcome of one compare to the outcome of another? Certainly there are metrics you can use and whatnot, but at the end of the day, did you have fun and was it worth it? Was it a good result? Could it be gooder than good? A pitcher of lemonade or a pitcher of egg nog only fills so much, and the more you pour into that pitcher of lemonade or the pitcher of egg nog, at some point you fill the brim, and you waste more. But I think, perhaps, it's, did you fill the pitcher with egg nog and lemonade to the brim? I think in both cases we can say, yes. And beyond that...
Mark Hughes:
I think it's probably a good lesson for... or at least a good mantra for a lot of Americans, who tend to compare things all the time. Like, "Was my Christmas gift as good as your Christmas gift?" "Well, let's not get into that." Comparison is the enemy of joy.
Peter Imburg:
Yeah, that's a great quote. And what we've heard today are two incredible stories, and I think that are full of details, completely unique to each other, but really show your, I'd say, dedication to spreading the word, innovative marketing, entrepreneurship, making things happen for a CEO or business owner. That is, for sure, a constant. Absolutely.
Mark Hughes:
Well-
Peter Imburg:
Yeah. Well, Mark, thank you so much for sharing these great stories with us and being here today. I really admire your creativity in marketing, and I'm sure we could probably keep you here all day to follow-up on the next 15 years in your career with similar stories. But I know you only have so much time for us, so we really appreciate your time. We are so fortunate to have a thought leader and marketing guru, author of the book, Buzzmarketing with us today, Mark Hughes. Mark, thank you so much.
Mark Hughes:
Awesome. Peter, thank you so much. Keep on Elf'ing, keep on Secret Santa'ing.
Peter Imburg:
All right, you got it. Thank you.