FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Get Out of Hell Free" Parody
Card Hits 1-Million Sold Mark
Creator Says Cards' Popularity Sends An Important Message
RIDGWAY, COLORADO -- July 25, 2006 -- A parody "Get Out of Hell Free" card, created by
a Colorado online columnist in response to being told he is going to hell, has hit a
million cards sold.
"To be sure, there is a message" behind the strong sales of the card, says Randy
Cassingham. "A message and a social phenomenon. It's a story of the rejection of religious
intolerance, a statement of 'I can think for myself, thank you'."
The card was created after an online reader told Cassingham he was going to go to
hell for writing an 87-word story about "feng shui" -- the Chinese art of "placement"
to create "energy and harmony". The reader condemned Cassingham to hell because, she
said, feng shui is "anti-Christian". (Feng shui is a philosophy, not a religion.) When
Cassingham told the reader a Methodist minister was OK with the story, she condemned him
to hell too.
"I figured that if she had the power to condemn me to hell with the snap of her mind,"
Cassingham said, "I should have the power to counteract her." He created the "Get Out of
Hell Free" card on his computer, had them printed, and offered them to the readers of his
online newsletter for $1 for 10 cards -- the cost of printing, packing and postage.
"Dollar bills started streaming in immediately," Cassingham said. It was Spring 2000, and
he didn't even have an online shopping cart. "The orders came in by mail," Cassingham
says. "The first 2,000 cards lasted three days."
And the orders have never stopped. Cassingham now has 20,000 cards printed at a time,
which last just four to six weeks. "The printers really scratch their heads over it," he
says, "but they love the business." Cassingham also sells "GOOHF" t-shirts, stickers, and
other items. "It has become its own little cottage industry for us."
The cards, a parody of the "Get Out of Jail Free" cards that come with the
Monopoly® board game, are probably the first successful online-to-offline crossover of
"viral marketing," Cassingham says, which is why he only charged enough to cover printing,
packing and postage. "I didn't feel a need to make a profit on the cards," Cassingham
says, "because they all have my web site's URL on them." The card is a "real object that I
knew would be passed around in the real world. And what's better in the 'dotcom' era than
to have your URL spread around?"
Indeed the cards, which his readers have spread to dozens of countries, have led to a
lot of traffic to his web site and subscriptions to his e-mail newsletter, which covers
weird news stories from all over the world. "It's a real win-win," Cassingham said. "I
get my site exposed to a new audience, and they have fun with the cards."
Cassingham's "This is True" newsletter is a pioneer in online publishing: he started
it in 1994 while working as a software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. He quit his day job in 1996 to work online full time and moved "away from
the rat race of Los Angeles" to Colorado. He works out of his home in an office "on a mesa
with views of two mountain ranges" in rural Western Colorado. A second newsletter -- the
"True Stella Awards" at http://www.StellaAwards.com
-- recounts ridiculous-but-true lawsuits and their impact on society. Dutton, a division
of Penguin USA, published his True Stella Awards book, based on his web site and newsletter,
last Fall.
The people who buy the cards don't usually use them to counter religious
prostilitizers, Cassingham says. Mostly, they're given to others to help cheer them up.
"The store clerk who just dealt with a screaming customer," he says. "The waitress whose
customer is never satisfied. The fellow employee who needs the message, 'I have to deal
with our idiot boss too.'" He notes that several customers have stapled a card to their
letters of resignation when they quit their jobs. "And, of course, they're the perfect
answer to those who insist on dictating what your beliefs should be."
The cards are even popular with the clergy. "Two priests posted to the Vatican have
the cards -- that I know of," Cassingham said. "One even admits to wearing a GOOHF
t-shirt under his cassock." Several ministers have ordered thousands of cards, presumably
to pass out to their congregations as a way to spark discussion.
Meanwhile, orders for the "GOOHF" cards, which Cassingham says is pronounced "goof
cards," continue to stream in. "Sin all you want," he says. "We'll print more." The cards
can be ordered online from http://www.GOOHF.com, or by
mail from Get Out of Hell Free, PO Box 666, Ridgway CO 81432. They're still $1 for 10 --
the cost of printing, packing and postage. The GOOHF card is a project of
http://www.thisistrue.com
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Contact Randy Cassingham
with questions and any press support needs.