Drum roll please…. Nissan Cube’ed Me!

I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that I just had the greatest June 23rd I have ever had in my life to this point.

It’s not everyday - or July 23rd for that matter - that you win a brand spankin’ new car! And a very cool fully teched out one at that! (apologies ahead of time but there will be an overuse of exclamation marks in this post). So for those of you who I didn’t phone or tweet or email or Facebook yet, I was chosen as one of the 50 Canadians to win a brand new Nissan Cube car in their online HyperCube contest.

First off, the much deserved thank yous. To my wife Bree and my daughters Taryn and Zoe, you were awesome and your enthusiasm is what made me push through long nights of video editing. To my parents who pushed all of their friends to vote - spending hours convincing them that their email address was not going to used for nefarious spamming when they submit it to register their vote. To my colleagues at Hoggan and Associates who were the victims of inoffice spam tactics cajoling them to vote. And to all my friends, colleagues and Twitter pals for pushing hard on the social networks for getting the word out - there is way too many to count, but I can tell you right now, there will be much online karma coming your way over the next while.

If it wasn’t for you all, I would still be rolling in the 1984 VW Rabbit (have I mentioned that it has over 318,000 km’s on it?).

And of course, thank you Nissan for the willingness to use the power of word of mouth and social media instead of feeding into the top-down mindshare approach of traditional advertising. I think you’ll agree that the power of the social networks is way more powerful and genuine than an ad running during Gossip Girl. And congrats to Capital C for your creativity.

So I guess the next step is to pick up this bad boy, which apparently has already been nicknamed Den Master Chris by JennMae.

Going ahead, there’s a few things I want to do. Obviously, I’m going to maintain this site and post on all things Nissan Cube for the next year. I’m also planning on doing a case study on the contest, documenting my own experiences as an actual participant and what it all means for the art of Word of Mouth marketing - after all, I do run the New Media division of one of the coolest PR firms on the West Coast!

I’m also going to write a post later today to share with the rather hilarious story of how I learned that I won the car last night.