Novermber 5th, 2006 |
Here's the general letter I sent out to the companies. Sometimes I would alter it in various ways. For example some company websites only allowed, say, 500 or 1000 characters, so I had to shorten the letter drastically. Other times if the company's product was really strange I would explain how I might use it just so they wouldn't be sending anything to waste. But here's the bread and butter of my invitation:
Hi there! I'm trying to do a project. It's a bit of a "good karma" social experiment. In fact it's called the Good Karma project. Here's the crux of it. I'd like to ask your company, along with several other companies, to send me a selection of your product for free (or failing that, samples!).
I know it sounds crazy but I'm completely serious. Here's why:
I recently had bad experiences with products from two different companies, prompting me to have to call them up and ask for refunds or replacements. But does it have to be that the only direct interaction that goes on between a consumer and a company is the addressing of grievances? I hope not! And so I came up with this idea.
I'll be documenting which companies I send this message to, along with what their responses are (the positive ones, at least; this is an optimistic project). I publish an article based website which sees several thousand unique visitors per month and has been included in a major national publication twice. But that shouldn't matter. Don't worry: I'm NOT going to bash the companies that choose not to send me product (many companies give very generously to very needy charities and that's much more important than sending things to me). This is NOT the "Good Karma Or Else project"...it's just the Good Karma project.
What do you think? I'd love to hear back from you and I don't mind answering any questions you might have or setting up a dialogue for some sort of mutually beneficial relationship.
Here's my address!
Carl Huber
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And if you'd like to email me, you can reach me at any of the following email addresses:
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Thanks a lot. I appreciate your time and I really look forward to hearing back from everyone. I've already received over a dozen contributions of great stuff from a wide array of companies (everything from a tuna fish producer to a casino supplier, a potato chip brand and more!) and I can't wait to see what the rest of this Good Karma project's invitation recipients think of it!
- Carl Huber
TheWAREHOUSE
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I look forward to your suggestions, contributions and feedback!
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