Toilet Paper Marketing Stunt

A story about how Unroll.me used unconventional marketing tactics to stand out at a major tech conference.

"We went to present at New York Tech Day, which had a couple hundred startups in a science fair-like atmosphere. We were probably the least impressive startup at the event, but we came to win. There were VCs, judges, reporters, and people looking for jobs.

We thought: 'What are we going to do to stand out? How are we going to make it so every single person at that event is talking about Unroll.me?' Everyone gives out credit card holders and stickers, but we wanted to be different.

I had my friends come in dressed in costumes - one friend Jimmy dressed as a trash can, someone dressed as Mr. Spam, and another friend dressed in a Captain Underpants costume to help kill spam. Then we went one step further and replaced all the toilet paper at the conference with Unroll.me branded toilet paper.

This was what everyone ended up talking about. No one was talking about our startup or any other startup - they were talking about how Unroll.me replaced all the toilet paper in the conference with our toilet paper. We ended up winning the event. I was so excited that I lifted up the trophy and dropped it, leaving a big crack right down the middle.

We probably spent the least amount of money at that event - just 20 rolls of toilet paper and some costumes from Party City. But we stood out and that's what mattered."