In many ways the Aucland TV ad, shown below was great. It won a Silver Lion in Cannes and the uproar it created was amazing!

The inspiration had come to us from this series of TV ads that Outpost.com had run in the US:

They have similar dark humor and irreverence and are lots of fun. Arguably, the Aucland ad is better because at least it conveys what we did – auctions – while the Outpost.com ads revealed nothing about Outpost.com (they sell computer equipment online).

That said, the ad was ahead of its time. Few people in Europe at the time understood the Internet let alone auctions on the Internet. A simpler, educational and descriptive TV ad as our competitor iBazar ran would have been more effective.