Back in 2006, the folks at Inphonic pulled a practical joke to one of their co-workers who were obsessed with his Jaguar, always searching for standalone parking spots, or at the most extreme corner he could find, hence Scott Ableman and fellow colleagues used 14,000 3M Post it Notes and covered the Jaguar S-Type complete with his colleagues name 'Walt' at the back of the windscreen. Upon posting on Flickr, with a Creative Commons License (Allowing the use for non-profit purposes)the stunt took on with immense popularity, reported in blogs, websites, national news networks etc, giving a boost to 3M's Post It Note in popularity and lending a hand in giving fresh ideas for the next April Fool's.
Then came 3M calling up Scott, asking for the rights to use his photo for their 6 month nationwide In-Store campaigns in the US, Scott negotiated a price with 3M for a meagre $2,000, however was then rejected by 3M saying that they would only pay the exact amount of money that would cost them to replicate the entire stunt, which should be around $1,000. Scott rejected and 3M never called again and went ahead re-creating the Post-It-Note It's amazing how a behemoth of a company would risk such extensive negative publicity by intending to save $1,000, mainstream media is mass, but social media touched directly to people's heart and conscience, not understanding this really does deserve the 3M marketing personnel (name withheld thou we have it) a boot from the department.
Extremely not cool, and we, like many others will stop using 3M Post It Notes.
Check out the original creation by the folks at Inphonics
