Monday, October 24, 2005

ByeByeNOW.com Commercial

Ah yes! Remember the bubble...the dot com bubble? Seems so long ago yet it was just 5 years ago. Well I found myself riding the bubble when I took a job in Florida. To make a long story short, the company I went to work for was bought by ByeByeNOW.com, a travel and vacation website. In addition to the website, we produce a weekly hour long show called Vacaton TV. The show highlighted vacations and travel products and drove people to the 800 number and website to purchase. Well we all know what happened to the bubble.

We produced a total of 7 shows and then the money was gone. Truly one of the best work experiences I've ever had though. I truly felt like I had equity in what we were doing and didn't mind the 14 hour days to put these shows together.

The video below is actually a commercial for ByeByeNOW.com. Priceline.com had William Shatner but we had Regis! who was hot with the sucess of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Each ByeByeNOW.com store received a custom spot. For those who know me you might recognize the voice over on this spot. You see these spots were produced towards the end of ByeByeNOW's existence and they didn't want to spend money on the voice talent. Well it turns out they had to pay me scale anyway. Thank you ByeByeNOW.com. I left ByeByeNOW at the end of 2001. They went bankrupt in early 2002. Like many dot coms then they were probably a bit ahead or their time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are absolutely right. ByeByeNow.com was a truly unique experience, in the sense that no matter how many hours you put in you always had a sense that you were working in something unique and innovative. I was hired around May 2001 (Marketing Department) and was moved to the production facility (studio) around August 2001. I worked under Jose Serrano. Man, those were fun days (while they lasted).