How The Zappos Photo Mystery Was Solved
Published: February 6, 2009
Author: David Rodnitzky
Congrats to Mike Bunnell for solving the mystery client photos – the correct answer was indeed Zappos. Nice try to CalTrainWreak for his attempt to steal away the victory by noting that the answer should really be “Zappos.com” – sorry Cal, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades!
I’m so impressed with the way that Mike solved this that I had to include his reasoning. Personally, I hope that Mike never stalks me – there will be no place to hide!
By the way, the prize for this contest is actually pretty cool – it’s a pass to a soon-t0-be-announced conference, valued at around $600 (details of the conference will be announced on this blog soon, hopefully in the next week, so stay tuned)!
Here’s Mike’s research:
How I figured it out….Well the first 2 photos told me that this is a young/hip company.The license plate told me that the company is in Nevada, they have an employee that does SEM, and that employee went to Purdue.In the last photo, I saw the Birkenstock display at the left, so I knew the had something to do with retailing footwear.After a couple Google searches around Nevada shoe retailer, I found Zappos’ wikipedia page which said their headquarters are in Nevada.To seal the deal, I searched LinkedIn for “zappos purdue” which returned one result: Robert Avila, Search Engine Marketer at Zappos.Thanks again — made me feel like a modern day Sherlock Holmes!
