Fear The Bug
As you may have heard, we've running a Geek Marketing Contest and putting up $5,000 for the best viral marketing idea we can find. While we were waiting for submissions to the Geek Marketing Contest, we decided to move forward with the creation of a rap song ourselves. We hired a group called the Big Beat Battalion (checkout their MySpace page) to write and create the song. The results are here:
THIS SONG IS AWESOME!!! I absolutely love it! The Big Beat Battalion did such an amazing job. They nailed it. These guys are pros and they were great to work with. Very down-to-earth and amazingly talented! You have to listen to the song to see what I'm talking about. You may or may not notice the friendly jabs at the end of the song, which are aimed at a couple of our competitors. That's OK, they'll notice...We picked on these two companies, because they help keep things fresh in our industry and we're glad to have such high caliber competition. Hopefully, they'll see these call-outs as the good-hearted hat tips we intended them to be.
Now, all we need is a video for our rap song - that should be fun! Feel free to use this song to create your own "Fear The Bug" Video.
Buggin' Out!
Coincidentally, today, we received a Geek Marketing Contest submission from Dan and MC Router (they are somehow affiliated with NerdCoreForLife). They wrote a song and did a video, which is great:
Watch the YouTube Video
The idea truly qualifies as something different that has the potential for a strong viral effect. We love it and we love the fact that NerdCoreForLife took the time to both create a song and video for the contest. That is just awesome! So far, this video is hands down the leading idea submission we have had for the Geek Marketing Contest. Barring any surprise 11th hour submissions, they are the likely winner, but there's still 1 day left and my last prediction was way off...
What are We Doing?
You may be asking yourself "what are these guys doing?" and "what does rap have to do with bug tracking and project management software?" Well, a few months ago, we probably wouldn't have dreamt of commissioning a rap song or running a Geek Marketing Contest to promote OnTime 2007. But then Angelo, our Marketing Director and I, went to a presentation by Seth Godin in New York City back in February. What we realized is that we're probably throwing away a significant portion of our marketing budget every single month. We spend all kinds of money on marketing efforts that are nearly impossible to measure, yet, at best, the results of such marketing efforts, if successful, are mediocre.
After watching Seth's presentation, we decided to brainstorm on some different ways to market Axosoft. The contest and rap songs are just the beginning. You're likely to see a lot more weird non-traditional stuff from us in the future. We already have the following non-traditional ways that we're promoting our products:
- Full Single-User Versions of our Software (Even the Hosted Version!) is Free! - The single-user version of our software, the entire suite, has been free for nearly 4 years and this year, with the introduction of OnTime 2007, we're even providing the hosted version of OnTime 2007 free of charge. You can get the software here. It's great to see some of the other software companies following our lead in providing free single-user versions of their products, too.
- Deeply Discounted 3-User Version for $197 with $100 of each sale Donated to a Charity - Starting February 20th of 2007, with the launch of OnTime 2007, we started selling a 3-user version of our software at a deep discount of just $197 (the software normally costs about $200 per user). On top of the discount, we're donating $100 from every sale to one of 3 charities (a charity for breast cancer, autism and multiple sclerosis). In just the first 40 days, we raised over $4,200 for these charities and we're on track to raise more than $20,000 this year alone! That's just awesome regardless of whether or not it has a viral effect. It's just a great cause.
Look for more unique stuff like this from us. We're always trying to keep it a little different and stay fresh.