Giving Thanks, Christmas Theme Updated

Less than a year ago we launched our first Christmas theme and kicked off a year long cycle of building a theme for many of the major holidays. It was something purely fun and it went over big. The latest can be found at www.brandthunder.com/christmas.

So in the list of family, friends and coworkers, one of the things I’m thankful for is the little idea that went big. We had a steady pace of new products and users outside our core business. An added benefit to promising the holiday themes was the built-in deadline. Despite the non-client nature of these browser themes, dates needed to be hit to coincide with spikes in searches and consumer interest.

If there’s a bigger lesson here, it’s probably to keep the side projects alive and give at least some of them the runway they need to get a true market test. It’s certainly been helpful to us.