Ship Your Enemies Glitter

What a great SEO story... http://observer.com/2015/01/exclusive-how-this-man-got-the-media-to-fall-for-shipyourenemiesglitter-stunt/

The home page probably explains the concept better than I would.

On January 12, a new site (and company) launched out of Australia. ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com would ship a very annoying glitter bomb to someone -friend or enemy- of your choice for $9.99 ($8.15 USD). Founder Matthew Carpenter was soon begging customers to stop placing orders so that he could keep up with all the glitter shipping demand.

However, it turned out that the prank website was itself a prank, or rather a New Years Resolution of Carpenter's to improve his marketing skills.  In Carpenter's words, he exploited the fact that the "media (here in Australia particularly) has become extremely lazy with sourcing." He started out with crowd source sites like Reddit and Product Hunt, and used the concept's popularity there to earn links elsewhere on the web. Eventually he got coverage from Time.com, Fast Company, the Telegraph, Huff Post, and Tech Crunch, until he auctioned the whole site off for $85,000.

 This story is interesting because of the way Carpenter pulled it off, both for his digital marketing strategy and for the fact that he proved something about the media in the process. Also, he uses a lot of jargon from the class, including "link juice," so he must be legit.