BRU advertisement??

[Dick Dunn]

fnf at fishpond.uucp (Fred Fish) writes about hearing of the "interesting" way
BRU was marketed...

This is material forwarded by Fred...
> The letter received by Gray Watson was part of a very small
> direct marketing test...
...
> I was looking for a new way to promote our Unix Backup and
> Restore Utility called BRU...
...
> So I wrote my own "article" and created my own publication, the
> "Denver Computer Journal."  Obviously, I could not use the name
> of an existing publication, that would be illegal.  Everything I
> wrote in my article was accurate.  Of course, I made our product
> sound good.  An ad for BRU was also on the same page.

The result of this was that some of us here in Boulder, CO (where the
"Jeff" of the ad had supposedly visited when he mailed the ads) got an
inquiry about the contents of the ad.  It made reference to a nonexistent
journal, as noted above; we verified that as best we could.

> A few handwritten notes were written on the page in blue ink
> (they were actually printed, but they looked handwritten).  They
> said "CALL THESE GUYS, THIS IS A GREAT PRODUCT -- JEFF" and a
> line pointed to the ad.  I also added the following at the bottom
> of the page, "P.S. HAVING A GREAT TIME IN COLORADO, SEE YOU
> SOON!"

And it was somehow associated with the "Fergus Arms" (I think that was the
name they chose) hotel.  On request, we checked for that in the Boulder
phone book.  No such animal, but we *did* happen on a "Jeff Fergus" listed
in the business section!...

> I mailed the letters from Colorado because I was planning a trip
> there.  The trip was postponed, so I mailed a big envelope full
> of stamped letters to the Boulder postmaster with instructions to
> postmark them in Boulder.  I used a Boulder P.O. Box as the
> return address in order to get any bad address returns (usually
> about 5% to 10% for most mailing lists).  The box belonged to a
> friend of mine name Jeff Fergus -- so the letter was actually
> mailed by a guy named Jeff (which is also my name).

Now, there aren't many hotels/motels in Boulder; most of us know which ones
exist and even which ones have been proposed or granted permits.  But at
this point we had a pair of names (Jeff and Fergus) which matched the
hand-written part of the note and the supposed hotel name.  The ZIP on the
mail covered the area in which Jeff Fergus' business address is listed
(80301), so at this point we figured it was pretty likely that this Jeff
Fergus was somehow involved in the dummied-up ad.

At this point I think it's more funny than anything...I didn't see any
fraud in it (from where I sit, not having received the ad but having
answered some questions about whether the places were real).  But it seemed
like a dumb idea to invent a journal and a hotel, in a place where it would
be easy for the marketing targets to check them or ask someone to check.
(Boulder is small, but it gets a lot of tourists, and it's got a large
university with significant EE and CS departments.)  The most fun comes out
of how little time it took for someone on USENET to cross-check it with us
here.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".