Prank Marketing: HubSpot's Inbound Marketing University Shut Down
Posted by Samantha Coren
When the PullnotPush family first saw the tweets about Inbound Marketing University being forced to go offline our hearts sank.
IMU has helped introduce so many people to our world of inbound marketing, so when we heard the buzz about it being served a cease and desist letter we had to see what was up. When we asked HubSpotters to give us the scoop they all stated that they weren't allowed to talk about it because of a non-disclosure agreement.
Fortunately, the inbound marketing community has excellent google-fu. Between Rebecca Corliss' hostage video and the lack of credibility from the website's of the lawyer and company serving the notice we knew something was fishy. Apparently the whole ordeal was a ploy to promote their new Ning social network cleverly called Captain Inbound Agency (or CIA for short).
People who signed up on the "Help Save Inbound Marketing University" landing page received a cute email from Captain Inbound directing them toward the new community. If you'd like to read more about all the little easter eggs of the prank Bryan Ricard, an iMU student, has an excellent write up on his detective work.
So how do you feel about HubSpot's clever prank to promote IMU? Did they get you?