The Flip March 16, 2009

I sent the following email the makers of the Flip video camera with the intent to kill two birds with one stone. I wanted to help out a friend who is working with the American Cancer Society (we all know how much I love to help my buddies at the ACS), and to obtain video of the wedding without a costly videographer.

The Flip Mino

Flip Guys: Hello! My fiance and I are throwing a Social Media Wedding on July 3rd of this year. We are working on a partnership with the American Cancer Society for this event. I am a member of the Social Media Club of Kansas City where we are conducting a research project on social networking. So far I have planned the entire wedding using email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Please keep reading; I hope I haven’t lost you already. The short story can be found on my blog: http://wedlog.wordpress.com. The part of the wedding I am working on now is the videographer. We refuse to pay wedding prices and think our friends could do a better job anyway. My idea is to have a flip available at each of our 10 tables for guests to use throughout the wedding. We will have an upload station with card readers and usb plugs for people to upload video and stills throughout the wedding. People will deposit the cameras on their way out and the Flips will then be donated to the American Cancer Society to help cancer patients document their feelings and share with their families during their therapy. So my proposition is this: will you donate 10 Flips to the Social Media Wedding/American Cancer Society in return for your product to be named to the media and on my blog? The media will be attending the event to report on new technology and social networking in everyday life. Steve Penn is writing an article in the Kansas City Star and a professor at Emory is researching our journey and writing about it in his urban design blog. Thank you for your consideration!

I hoped to get a response from them but didn’t expect anything. I mean, I basically asked for a bunch of free stuff.

I got three separate emails back from different departments. It seems like my email had bounced around the company for awhile. The first reply was what I expected: “We are unable to provide free products.” The kind gentleman did guide me toward the Flip Video Spotlight program which is a “challenge grant program that provides reduced cost camcorders to qualifying organizations”. Very interesting.

Next I received a response from the Flip Video Sales and Marketing team:

Thank you for your interest in Flip Video! We really appreciate your
ideas and thinking of us to participate in your wedding, but at this
time we do not have the appropriate resources to take on your marketing
opportunity. Though Pure Digital Inc. is growing fast, our marketing
team is still quite small and we are only able to focus on a few key
projects at this time.

I have to admit they are very polite. I really didn’t expect any replies at all to this nonsense.

The third response was also very polite and included a generous offer:

Congratulations in advance on your upcoming social media wedding! It sounds like a very fun wedding and we can send you one Flip Mino and offer you a 20% discount on the other 9. Does that work for you? We get dozens of requests for cams each  day and do not have the inventory to send 10 cams for free.

So now my goal is to figure out a way to make this work. Being a cancer survivor, I know that having an outlet to share your feelings and thoughts is so very therapeutic, even for friends and family. Why not include video blogging as a therapy resource?

So how do we make this happen?