Save the Date, Not the Cost

My brother David works in the search marketing space so when it came time for him and his fiance, Tiffany, to send out "Save the Dates" for their wedding, he thought it'd be fun to send people on a search scavenger hunt of sorts to get all the info on the wedding.

Here's the postcard they sent out directing people to Google themselves...



And here's what came up when I Googled "Aaron Goldman" that day...



Here's a close-up of the ad...



Definitely an innovative use of search and I give my bro props for creativity.

The post-script here is that his Google AdWords ran up a tab of over $1,000 in just a few short days. Apparently, he got dinged with a low Quality Score due to limited history with Google and a landing page that wasn't relevant to the query. This drove his CPC's upwards of $10.

Needless to say, he had to shut off the campaign and now, some folks who never got around to Googling themselves must be wondering what kind of message Dave and Tiff are sending them.

Here's what comes up when you Google me today...



I'm sure I'm not the only invited guest that has this ad running against them...



What are you trying to say, Dave? I need to find myself??? (Hey, at least it's not the old, "Buy Aaron Goldman on eBay!")

After apologizing for clicking on his ad 15 times, I told my brother he should drop their Crate and Barrel registry and ask people to donate to his AdWords account in leiu of gifts. Does anyone know if Google sells gift cards?