Clever way of measuring awareness of offline marketing online

I ran across this post on Fast Company this afternoon. Clever, actually. My favorite line is the part where they say, “In this case, advertising is trumping engineering in creating value.” That’s a bunch of hooey, though I think it’s a great example of strong advertising and marketing creating demand, at least for their tchotchke. The thing that I think is most interesting about the eBay Index, as Fast Company calls it, is its value as a metric of awareness. Clever, clever marketing idea, and an innovative way to build buzz around your product. Seth Godin would be proud (or better yet, read Trout and Ries. You’ll get more from it.)