Earlier this year, as many of the readers here know, we at A Sales Guy had big, bold, and somewhat risky marketing stunt. You can read about it and it’s abject failure here.

In a nutshell, we were going to do a pop-up event for Virgin America’s inaugural flight to Denver from San Francisco. The plan was to show up at the for the first flight from Denver to San Francisco. We were going to  give away copies of Not Taught, hand out T-shirts, Red Bull and Coffee and we even had a “red” ticket that was worth $500 dollars for one lucky winner.

We were pumped!

We bought tickets so we could go through security, we packed 200 books into suitcases, we had it nailed.

That is until we arrived and learned that the 7:30 “inaugural” flight didn’t exist and to make matters worse Virgin had created a HUGE event which included Richard Branson.  We couldn’t get within 100 miles of their event. We were preempted.

Our idea was a  bust, that’s all there is to say.

Fast forward and it all worked out.

Did we meet Richardson Branson?

NO!

Did we get to distribute 200 copies of Not Taught to Virgin passengers?

NO!

Did we get lots of coverage for a daring marketing stunt and increase coverage for the book?

NO!

What we got was better.

For the event, we had ordered custom shirts to hand out with the books. Rather than throwing them away, we went to the local shelter and gave them away.

It was awesome, they went in seconds. We sat and talked with the people and got to hang with them. They were unbelievable grateful. One particular person was wearing a sweatshirt, and that’s all he had. It was 97 degrees outside. He was thrilled to get a t-shirt.

We had a blast, we took pictures, hung out, and laughed.

It was so much fun, we’ve decided to do it again, but this time we’re going to give away free lunch.

It sucked that our event was a bust. I mean a complete bust, but in the end, it worked out. We made a lot of people happy and that’s what it’s all about.

I’m glad we failed, ’cause in the end, we won.