Dear readers,
Every once in a while well-meaning people get things wrong. And we did it last week when we predicted that David&Goliath would not pay a “ransom” for the URL davidandgoliath.com—which they’d been trying to score since way back in 1999—to Dallas-based agency Slingshot.
We meant that the agency and founder David Angelo would probably not have to exchange an agreed-upon sum for the address since the whole point was to bring public attention to the Slingshot Foundation. But Angelo did indeed agree to make a donation to that group in exchange for davidandgoliath.com. According to the press release (of which there was one), the negotiations ended on Monday.
The project’s official Twitter account seemed to joke about this fact, tick tock.
@_DavidAngelo @DEFYyourGOLIATH pic.twitter.com/4JqzLvWgTS
— David N. Goliath (@urlransom) August 29, 2016
Thankfully, we can now confirm that all’s well that ends well. The parties involved somehow managed to come to an agreement, and the URL in question will lead to David&Goliath’s homepage at some point in the near future:
“Over the weekend, Slingshot founder and CEO Owen Hannay connected with David Angelo to discuss the terms of the exchange. Mr. Angelo happily made the contribution and got his precious URL.”
Angelo even went so far as to give slingshot a quote for the story: “Kudos to Slingshot for coming up with a creative, inventive and very funny way to get our attention. After 17 years, we can at last reunite with our beloved URL. We had a great time playing along this week, and in the spirit of good will and love, we will of course be donating to the Slingshot Foundation.”
Slingshot ECD Susan Levine said, “We knew this would be a risk, not only the whole hostage angle but prominently displaying Jordan’s chest hair for the world to see – that was down right scary. But seriously, we’re thrilled that David played along and we could help our charitable foundation.”
Here’s the last video, depicting a URL finally freed from its years of confinement to be with the agency it loves in sunny Los Angeles.
We have no comment on that one.
The series, which was shot and edited by Kevin Hamm of Slingshot’s in-house production team Varnish, starred that shop’s ACDs Jordan Dontos and Clay Coleman as “half wit hostage takers” who dared to torture a laptop “embodying the URL.”
Here is where we insert a plug for The Slingshot Charitable Foundation, which was established in 2010 to develop childhood learning programs in the greater Dallas and Austin areas.
Our only questions: how did this really happen? And how much does a URL go for these days?