Speaking of Branding….

All this talk of branding with David Lewis auctioning off Jeff Molander’s domain name, and all of the branding discussion that has taken place on Revenews got me to thinking about a story Wayne had told me about the November 7th Performance Marketing Summit in 2002 and the subsequent I Hate Wayne Porter T-shirts at the Affiliate summit in New York to get dialogue on the rules of engagement for “Adware”. You can read the minutes of that meeting here if you are not familiar with what went on. Wayne moderated the summit but in reality he was in a no-win situation being a neutral party on an issue that was highly charged. A group of clever pranksters lead by Brook Schaaf printed up and distributed dozens of the tee-shirts at the summit. It was a true jest and an ironic because Wayne is really a hard guy to hate and he is the kind of guy who can laugh at his whole expense. From there the prank became industry lore and more pranks follow every year.

So, I noticed that the ihatewayneporter.com domain had expired., so I scooped it up with the idea to raise some money for a charity, Wayne suggested a local one, so I picked our local little league, Ona Little League, where the same Wayne Porter had lined out to third in a heart breaking loss to Vinson in the championship game of the regionals in 1985- that’s over twenty years ago! Small world. I met Wayne on the internet and had no idea that we had chewed a lot of the same dirt, with him being from Salt Rock, WV and me from Milton, WV.

So, here’s the idea. I’m going to sell those I Hate Wayne Porter t-shirts for about a month or so and encourage everyone to buy themselves and all their friends and co-workers one for the upcoming summit. Then I am going to auction the domain name off to the highest bidder, so if you really hate Wayne, then this is your chance. All of the proceeds will go to Ona Little League.

Wayne also suggested we get merchants involved as well, so if you are a merchant, affiliate or network and would like to donate to a worthy cause, here’s your chance. Go to this webpage, here, and click on the available sponsorships pdf, and fill out the last section, don’t worry about the duration, just write in I Hate Wayne and we will know what it is for. What do you get? A webpage created just for their or your site, that will be linked from the main page of the little league site, you can create the whole page yourself, but it would be limited to the area beside the menu to maintain the look of the site. You’ll get the satisfaction of helping out little kids from our area, one of the best of the small little leagues around, plus, I will have our treasurer send you a receipt on nice letterhead showing you donated money to a non profit organization for your taxes. It’s win win.

So get those pens and checks ready, we need some new fences around our fields, so, give until it hurts. Wayne really wants to see himself hated like the old days.

About Jimmy Daniels

A reluctant blogger, Windows XP guy, Nascar fan and long time affiliate marketer, Jimmy Daniels has been favoring his kids over everything else, as he should be.
You can find Jimmy on Twitter: @jdaniels.

Website: http://www.jimmydaniels.com