Which came first?

So, after creating the peepdrinks.com website, our thoughts immediately turned to figuring out how we could drive some traffic towards the site.

At the time, in the mid “double-aughts”, social media had not yet taken hold… so our cohort was forced to resort to old-world marketing schemes.  Which I’ll describe… but first, a brief diversion:

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face and the egg is frowning, looking a bit pissed off. The egg mutters, to no-one in particular, “Well, I guess we answered that question!”

Which came first?

Okay, so there were two front-runners in the conversation.  And I’ll share them both

1. How about we buy a palette of marshmallow peeps, print a few hundred stickers that say “peepdrinks.com”, and walk through our neighborhood, giving a few packs of peeps to every bartender in the area?  Surely it will be such a conversation-piece that a bunch of people will check out the site…
2. Well, what do people flock to on the internet?  Porn… So, is there any possible way we can relate peepdrinks to porn? It turned out, “peepsluts.com” was an available domain name.  Much to our surprise — since it sounds like some kind of “peep-show” site, we thought it would surely be taken by some smut-peddler… but it wasn’t.  So I bought it.

For the Internet Generation, the idea of paying cash for material objects (and physically distributing them) was somewhat repugnant, so we all agreed that “peepsluts” was a better idea.

But what does that mean?  After dismissing some extremely vulgar ideas, we decided that naked women posing with PeepDrinks would be the most tasteful option.

Our crowd of maybe 6 or 8 friends decided that a “sister site” called peepsluts.com would be the best way to attract attention.  After our best efforts at persuading the women in the room, only one agreed to pose nude with a marshmallow peep drink in hand, for the “greater good” of the peepdrinks.com site. And it came with a condition:

I’ll do it, but I won’t be the only one.  There have to be at least three peepsluts.  If you can convince at least two other women to do this, then I’ll do it too.

Fair enough.  But a few days later, after a few ridiculous discussions with sexy strangers, the humor had evaporated and enthusiasm for the concept waned. (Although honestly I was quite impressed with the responses I got from the bizarre inquiry — there’s something to be said for a completely unique pick-up line…)

So what happened next?  And why are we here today?