Tracing viral marketing

I’m not sure if it’s really meant to be viral, but signs have been popping up all over Grand Junction that state simply “Where’s Wilbur?”

After seeing them on about 5 major roads through town, I figured I’d do some digging.

The first search turned up exactly what the people of the campaign wants people to see when they see the signs.http://www.whereswilbur.net/  (Link Dead)

It has a picture of their signs along with some campaign signs, a couple blurry pictures with a guy in a pig costume, and 3 youtube videos showing people theoretically doing something else, until they see a blurry pig costumed person. Of course, they got the name of the monument wrong.

The first step was to look at the domain. Whois showed an email address with @basicfoodgroup.com as the base. Basicfoodgroup.com must be an email only domain because it came up with a default apache page. Whois on basicfoodgroup turned up nothing more than their ISP, ecentral out of denver. 

A search for “Basic Food Group” Denver turned up lots of restaurant pages, but none of them with any reviews, so it must have mistakenly gotten into the database as a restaurant. Digging further turned up a page with mention of none other than Famous Dave’s, a rib joint, being opened in denver by that company. The article also mentioned Wilbur beans and had an email address of Wilbur@

Famous Dave’s, of course, opened up here within the last year or so.

Mystery Solved. Now to see what comes of their little viral marketing campaign, and how long it will take them to come out and say their name.