FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: JESSE LAWLER
PH: 949-268-7742
Small Business Owner Helping Veterans
Pushed Past the Brink of Sanity
After Free T-Shirt Give-Away
Goes Viral…Globally
ORANGE COUNTY, CA
Between Thursday at 9:00 PM and Monday morning, one little $30 add placed on Facebook had gone viral to 75 different countries in seven continents and all 50 states. The company owner was ill-prepared…
“I guess we didn’t tell him EXACTLY what happened while he was on vacation,” said Jesse Lawler, Marketing Director at SoCalVAHomes.org. “I sent him a couple of texts, but even Friday morning at the company, we didn’t realize what was happening!”
The company was offering a free T-Shirt to promote its business which offers fully custom renovated homes for zero down zero closing costs to active and retired military families in Southern California.
“Pete came back in the office Monday morning after being on a family vacation in Seattle. When he walked in I told him to sit down,” said Brandon Breshears Director of Acquisitions. “Then I told him the whole story…and that we needed another FIFTY GRAND to buy more T-Shirts and get them mailed out!”
“WHAT the…@#%*!” said Peter Van Brady, the founder of SoCalVAHomes.org. Obviously he didn’t understand the scope of what had happened…yet…
The company had only given away about half of its original 150 T-Shirts so far. This recent marketing effort began only a week ago on Facebook to see if it would result in qualified VA home buyers (an active or retired military home buyer using his VA benefit to purchase.) Mr. Lawler, who was in charge of the campaign had focused on a Southern California veteran audience on Facebook…
“Pete started slouching in his chair and unraveling a little bit as we described HOW the campaign had gotten…well…out of control is one way to describe it,” said Mr. Breshears.
Brandon began to show Mr. Brady how Thursday evening, just one individual with an online alias of “nicksatdown” (with influence on a site called reddit.com), had reposted the Facebook offer for a free T-Shirt. By Friday morning when Brady had his first coffee on vacation, the company’s website had over 3000 visitors and 700 requests for T-Shirts. By Monday morning those numbers had skyrocketed to over 25000 visitors and 4700 T-Shirt requests!
“Pete is a little older than the rest of the team here,” said Jesse. “It
didn’t take long for him to get a bit overwhelmed by what had happened! We did the numbers again and I watched him sort of glaze over. Then…well…I just don’t think he was prepared for this and to spend fifty grand on T-Shirts…so he sort of completely came unraveled. You can see it here…we had to protect him from himself, so we kind of tied him up…just for the day though,” claims Jesse.
As this story continues to unfold, the team at SoCalVAHomes.org has “released” Mr. Brady from his protective garment and they are feverishly attempting to verify the information received from the prospective T-Shirt recipients.
“They set me free after a long day of being ‘tied up’ in the office,” said Mr. Brady. “I was thankful for their ‘intervention’ though.” When asked how he intended to handle the requests, he replied, “We seemed to have collected a lot of questionable and unverifiable information. So we are emailing and calling those who requested T-Shirts,” said Brady.
“We would sincerely like those who have the same compassion for our servicemen and woman as we have, to receive a complimentary T-Shirt. We would like them to re-visit the website by clicking THIS LINK HERE and provide verifiable phone numbers and email addresses,” said Peter Van Brady.
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The offer of a free T-Shirt has been amended to adults only (you must be over 18) and live in the United States. If you are Active duty and deployed overseas, PLEASE say so in the comments section on the web form and provide your rank. Only verifiable requests will be honored. It may take some time to honor all valid requests.
All valid requests will be entered into a contest. The winner of that contest will be awarded a Caribbean cruise for two!
Your patience is greatly appreciated. And as always: WE APPRECIATE YOUR SERVICE.
