Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

by Ryan Holiday

If we go back to 1999, we can find an even better example. In his book The PayPal Wars, Eric Jackson, an early marketer at PayPal, reveals how PayPal became synonymous with eBay. Realizing that its most compelling pitch came when a potential buyer asked an auction seller if they could pay for the item with PayPal, the company’s engineers created a buyer bot that emailed sellers to ask if it could use PayPal and then purchased the item if the seller was willing. The goods would later go to charity—but buying the unwanted items was a cheaper, more lasting way to hook users than advertising was. I don’t think a direct marketer or a traditional marketer—with their proclivities for cheap advertisements or mail—would have thought of either of those ideas. This is a totally different approach. It’s half strategy, half engineering, with a pirate’s respect for the “rules.” It’s the kind of thing that requires collaboration across a company, from multiple departments and perhaps even, in some particularly aggressive or experimental cases, sign-off from senior leadership.