It’s the net, stupid.
On a lark, I posted a humorous account of my friend Eric’s and my attempt at refilling an aesthetic but highly unusable pepper mill. It’s now one of the most trafficked pages on my site. People come to the site constantly to see the photo instructions for refilling the grinder.
A few months after I posted it, I got an e-mail from a PR rep at the
Chef’n Corporation. They thought the account was hysterical, and
volunteered to send Eric and I a set of the new pepper grinders and some
peppercorns. That was sweet.
Presumably Chef’n updated their site with better directions. But even
today, people come to my site to get directions on how to refill this
thing. I’ve just checked the Chef’n site, and I think I see why. Their instructions are a single paragraph. That is, of course, absurd. People traffic my photos quite heavily because they need a visual to show them what to do. I would have thought the marketing people would have put the inventor into a photo set showing him refilling it. It would be great exposure for him, and keep people satisfied with the grinder.
But alas, no. What do I know?