Pets.com Sock Puppet
The floppy-eared sock puppet with the wristwatch collar became more famous than the store he was selling — a Macy's parade balloon and a Super Bowl ad for a company that lasted nine months past its IPO. He remains the face of the entire dot-com bust.
TBWA\Chiat\Day's San Francisco office created the Pets.com sock puppet, performed by comedian Michael Ian Black. Pets.com itself launched in November 1998, with Amazon buying a 54% stake in its first venture round in 1999. The puppet debuted in ads in August 1999 and promptly outgrew the store: a 36-foot balloon in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, then a $1.2 million Super Bowl spot in January 2000 that ranked #5 on USA Today's Ad Meter.
But the economics were fantasy. In its first fiscal year, Pets.com took in $619,000 in revenue while spending $11.8 million on advertising, selling its goods for roughly a third of what they cost it. The company went public on NASDAQ in February 2000 at $11 a share, raising $82.5 million. Nine months later, on November 7, 2000, it announced it was shutting down, the stock at 19 cents. The puppet outlived the company — his rights sold in 2002 for $125,000 to a lender that relaunched him with the slogan "Everyone deserves a second chance" — and he remains the shorthand for the whole dot-com bust.
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