Fruit of the Moon

Those of you on twitter have been assaulted by #moonfruit madness for the past few days. Some people are having a good time with a bit of viral marketing. Some are agitated by the most intrusive ads since bathroom billboards. Most people probably just want to know what the hell a #moonfruit is.

Let's start with the last group. Moonfruit is a British based company that builds websites. In order to celebrate their tenth anniversary, they're randomly giving away ten MacBook pros to people who mention them on twitter.

Personally, I think this is brilliant. The base MacBook Pro costs $1200. Elementary school math tells me that ten would cost them $12000. While that sounds like a lot of money, Moonfruit is getting a hell of a lot of bang for their buck compared to the money spent on more traditional advertising.

People have gone giddy for moonfruit on Twitter. For the first few days, it was in the top trending topics right alongside Michael Jackson and #gorilla penis. It's easy to understand why. It is worth the minimal effort for a slim chance to win a hot piece of tech.

Others, however, feel betrayed by their friends. I don't see how this campaign is any different from countless other marketing attempts though the years. My old bank would give me $10 every time I referred somebody that opened a new account. My cellular provider ran a similar scheme.

Moonfruit's tactics are even more innocent. They're not requiring people to refer or promote their products, just to talk about it. This is all about brand awareness and nothing more. Twitter users aren't endorsing Moonfruit, they're simply talking about it.

I have never heard of Moonfruit before this whole campaign. I imagine I'm not alone. As an experiment, I'd say this was a success. But there is a major risk of diminishing returns for these sorts of endeavors. This worked once, but people aren't going to put up with this all the time.