I find this disturbing: The One Laptop Per Child foundation repeated its “Give One Get One” program from 2007, apparently fixed all the problems from the year before (namely, virtually no promotion other than word of mouth and abysmal fulfillment/customer service)… and saw its sales drop by 93%.
This in spite of a mainstream ad campaign (including outdoor and television) and presumably seamless fulfillment through amazon.com.
The idea of this program is that you purchase two of OLPC’s mini-laptops and one is sent to a kid in a developing country and the other sent to you, allowing you to putz around and explore this approach to improving the world through technology. We did 2 G1G1s last year and it was a worthwhile experience.
But now, explaining the sales implosion, Nicolas Negroponte, the MIT professor who founded OLPC, told the Boston Globe “we’re not the newest game in town… the novelty has worn off.” Really? I would guess that the 2008 campaign reached millions of qualified donors who never even heard of the concept until now.
A better explanation is probably the economy. Most donation-supported organizations are having a tough year, and maybe the people who were most likely to be fascinated enough by the G1G1 concept turned out to be exactly those least able to afford $400 to participate.
But still… a 93% sales fall-off in spite of a marketing campaign that appeared to do everything right. For those of us who live and die by results, that’s a bunch of cold water in the face.