So I’m minding my own business one day on the subway and I noticed that all the iPod/iPhone/iWorld ads had been taken down (temporarily) and replaced by this weird multi color looking banner asking me if I had windorphins. Well the combination of thinking about endorphins and seeing weird colorful Dr.Mario-esque figures was compelling enough for me. I had to go visit the site just to figure out what the heck windorphins were. What I found was not immediately apparent… some pretend doctor telling me about something, but before I could hear what he had to say I had already scrolled down and clicked on a video clip. I came to find out that this was all a cleverly disguised eBay micro site that was trying to capture ‘the feeling of winning’.

I also noticed they had a contest at the bottom that you could play every day, and I knew I was a shoe in for that, so for 3 days straight I tried to pick the correct windorphin but I had no luck. Seems like a lot of other users were also trying to feel those windorpins in action; the first two weeks the average user came back and interacted more than once to try to win the contest. In week three they changed the interactive portion of the website from the contest to allow you to create your own Mr.Potato Head like windorphin and the interaction per visitor plummeted.

Judging by the amount of advertisements that bombarded Boston public transportation, I had a theory that other major cities might be experiencing the same campaign. I broke the data down by state and sure enough, the top 5 states all had major public transportation. Not surprisingly, Boston did not break the top 3 but at least we beat out Philly.

While doing my research, I stumbled upon a funny story about the site. Apparently one of the writers for the Motley Fool, Rick Aristotle Munarriz, attended a conference held by Ebay where they announced their windorphins campaign. Rich actually went home and registered windorphins.com before Ebay! He wrote a full story about it on the Fool’s website. I remember when eBay was the premier site on the web to sell your clever domain names. I wonder what price would have had eBay feverishly clicking the “Buy It Now button.”

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