over 11 years ago

Potentially awesome idea

Potentially awesome idea. Likely pretty easy. If I wasn’t an employee (disqualified), I might chase the $25k with this idea.

The Problem
Getting people with the same last name to meet-up and engage in family history can be a challenge. Get this right and you’ll have the attention of the large family history industry players.

The Idea
My brother noticed this on Facebook earlier this year. Teespring.com has had remarkable success getting its partners (internet marketers) to generate significant traffic of people with the same last name!

How do they do it? They made it easy for resellers to create campaigns offering cool clothing imprinted with surnames. Check out these recent campaigns.

http://teespring.com/brand-thing 1.4K Facebook Likes

http://teespring.com/harvey-thing 2.1K Facebook Likes

http://teespring.com/bennett-thing0 22K Facebook Likes!

The Family History Opportunity?
Figure out how to engage/creatively market to this traffic to get a significant percentage to become interested in any one of many genealogy or family history solutions. This "cross-selling" could be via games, direct marketing or even offering more clothing.

Disclaimer
I spoke with teespring.com today and learned that although their resellers did a very brisk business on Facebook earlier this year, Facebook has since made targeting users by name a violation of their rules. Darn! That said, I did learn that many of their resellers still have very large, recent Website Custom Audience (WCA) email lists, that represent a significant opportunity.

Good Luck!