Someone sent CEOs iPhones with actual bites taken out 🍎

Plus the week's wildest marketing experiments

Monday briefing time! ☕️

Here are 5 viral campaigns to know about today:

#1

This company sent iPhones with actual bites taken out of them

Appcharge wanted people to feel the 30% tax Apple takes from app developers.

So they sent dozens of iPhones with physical bites removed to industry leaders:

They literally cut chunks out of brand new iPhones, packaged them again, and shipped. They also put up a billboard near a game developer conference last week:

It makes total sense - Appcharge sells a platform for app payments.

The damaged iPhones probably cost them $50K total. But everyone who received one had to show it to their entire office. Then post about it.

My take: Weird physical gifts = conversations that ads can’t buy. Destroying $1,000 phones is a beautiful conversation starter. And it worked. Every exec who opened that box immediately understood: Appcharge is dead serious about killing app store fees.

#2

A founder is literally offering equity for tattoos

Browserbase CEO Paul Klein launched a “Tattoo Equity Calculator” last week.

Get their logo permanently inked on your body → receive actual company shares.

Face = 1% equity. Arms = 0.5%. Feet = 0.2%.

Sounds insane?

It should. Until you hear about the guy who turned two butt tattoos into $1.2 million.

I’m NOT making this up:

In 2019, someone got a startup’s logo tattooed on their ass as a joke. The founder gave them equity for it. That startup just sold for nearly $2 billion.

Here’s what actually happened (and why it’s marketing genius):