Viral Marketing, buzz marketing, free marketing - or almost free, if it’s done right.  And that’s what Cambrian House did by delivering 1000 Pizzas to The GooglePlex unannounced, filming it and putting it up on YouTube and Google Video. According to GapingVoid.

"One of the crazier PR stunts I’ve seen for a while: Cambrian House, an open-source software company, turn up at Google unannounced and feed them 1000 complimentary pizzas .

I thought the tone of the YouTube video was a wee bit too "Dotcom-MTV" for my tastes, but hey, I’m probably not the target market.

That being said, kudos to them for having a go. This is classic "Ooze" in action ["Ooze" i.e. OoS, short for "Objects of Sociability], which as I’ve said before, I believe is the future of marketing."

[Future of marketing:] Where "the message" is replaced by "the social gesture" etc.

Hmm…how should we measure the success of this tactic? 

Google Video = 23 ratings   YouTube  and 25 ratings on YouTube.  Not that much.

But it’s spreading in the blogosphere now and I know about Cambrian House now, and they would have to have spent a lot more money than it costs for the 1,000 pizzas (probaby ~ 7,000 - 8,000 dollars to order that many pizzas). 

Strategic Public Relations also has a post where they ask why Cambrian House posted the YouTube version of the video rather than the Google Video version on their site.

"Hugh calls it a stunt, but stunts are for Evel Knievel—there looks to be some strategy behind this pie surprise. The idea is interesting, but creating and posting the video was the real genius.

Unfortunately the software company posted the YouTube-hosted version to its site instead of the one at Google Video. Doph! That’s a subtle way of telling Google how you feel about their video-sharing service. Check out the video to learn how they pulled it off and for a laugh."

I put the Google Video (in respect to Google) on Webmetricsguru instead of the YouTube version.