Cards Against Humanity: Sold Nothing for $5

For Black Friday 2013, Cards Against Humanity created a product called 'Nothing.' It was nothing — a $5 purchase that delivered absolutely nothing in return. The checkout page was brutally honest: 'You are buying nothing. This will not be shipped. Nothing will arrive. Nothing will be in the box, because there is no box.' They then published a real, fully itemized spreadsheet of exactly how they spent the $71,145 raised: $35,000 in employee bonuses, $6,200 in payroll taxes, $4,067 on a surprise staff trip, $2,263 in profit sharing — line by line, down to the last dollar. The transparency was part of the bit. They ran variations for years: in 2015 they bought an undeveloped plot of land and sold 250,000 pieces of it for $15 each; in 2016 they dug a '$100,000 hole' in the ground with no purpose and documented it; in 2017 they sold 30,000 boxes of actual, literal, certified bull feces labeled 'Cards Against Humanity Saves America — BullSh*t Edition.' Each year the stunt was different. Each year it made national news. Each year they made money for doing things no sane brand would do.

CAH's brand is built on irreverence and intelligence, and their audience is self-aware enough to appreciate satire of the culture they're part of. By satirizing Black Friday, they gave that audience something to share that made them feel clever for getting it. The product was the statement, and the statement was the brand. Crucially, the stunt was always honest — the spreadsheet, the real land purchase, the actual feces — which gave each campaign credibility that pure performance art would have lacked.

$71,145 from 'Nothing' in 2013. The hole alone generated $100,000+ in press coverage worth of attention. Each year's variation was covered by major news outlets with no paid promotion. CAH developed arguably the most loyal cult following in board games, with customers who will buy anything the brand does simply to be part of whatever insane thing comes next.