And now, for something completely different…
For 7 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. We are taking matters into our own hands.
We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own, official, HD channel on YouTube.
But we want something in return.
We want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.
Monty Phyton official YouTube, channel description
In other words, the Phytons publicly gave up on going after people who used their own work to crowd them out of the market – but they did it with style, and not without giving their audience the benefit of a doubt, along with a direct path (Amazon link) to make things right. It worked. Immediately after this move in 2009, the goodwill channeled through Amazon store links in the description of their videos drove sales of their DVDs by +23000% (yes, 230 times) and shot them to the bestseller list.
In the right context, publicly accepting a weakness can signal strength, and this can help even when the competition is free, ubiquitous, and has a head start.