Dry erase board HPOA Jenny fake, copied various others ideas

Meet Andrew McDonald, the first whiteboard pictorial messenger. The idea behind theCHIVE’s fake quitting campaign.On August 10, theCHIVE posted a series of photographs supposedly submitted to them by a disgruntled worker of an unnamed company. Which, turns out was actually just a viral campaign designed from the creators of the site.

Additionally, theCHIVE has not only confirmed that it was simply a joke, but “Jenny” posted on Twitter a confirmation as well.

Social Media Viral Infection

Now that the cat is out of the bag, people are trying to understand why this became such a viral hit. Viral campaigns are often genius mixes of social media sites and some form of multimedia, which results in a massive amount of Web traffic. Web traffic of course results in advertising and other income.

So how did this all fall into place?

After browsing through popular posts on Reddit, we came across an interesting pictorial spread from Andrew McDonald, which shows a series of dry erase board comments that would remain on his digital camera if lost. Clearly theChive gets a great deal of similar postings that appear on Reddit submitted to their site. Add this opportunity with the coincidental buzz already appearing internationally about the Jet Blue flight attendant who quit in a blaze of glory, and you get viral gold.

John and Leo Resig, creators of theCHIVE, took out an ad on Twitter locating Elyse Porterfield, who portrayed Jenny the HPOA. It would appear that Facebook fans even found out before the media sites like Engadget and Boing Boing had the proof. More than likely the aftershocks of this viral campaign with work out best for Porterfield, and only be a short lived traffic influx for theCHIVE.

[Original Gag][Confirmation of joke][Reddit thread for Andrew]