Beenz.com

"beenz.com" was a web site that allowed consumers to earn beenz, a type of online currency, for performing activities such as visiting a Web site, shopping online, or logging on through an Internet service provider. The beenz e-currency could then be spent online with participating Web merchants around the world.

The marketing and brand concept created positioned Beenz as ‘the web’s currency,’ global money that would challenge the world’s major currencies, including the dollar and the pound. The project made marketing history by creating the first ever global, digital currency and even beat the new Euro to the market.

The press went wild with the concept of a new global currency. The Beenz brand and its global marketing was pivotal to raise over $100 million in capital from giants such as Larry Ellison of Oracle, Francois Pinault of PPR, Vivendi Universal, Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti and Hikari Tsushin of Japan, among others.

Since launching a new currency is illegal, beenz management and its legal teams had to meet with finance ministers across Europe to assure them that Beenz was not a true currency but, in fact, virtual points. Its image as a renegade company, bucking government institutions, garnered it immediate cult status. Beenz offices in London were actually raided by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the police on suspicion of counterfeiting (apparently the FSA misunderstood some of their claims). As a result of its marketing Beenz received several international awards.

The international launch of Beenz included the U.S., Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia and China.

The company was sold privately to US-based Carlzon Marketing Group in 2001 for an undisclosed sum. Carlzon was interested in beenz's points technology system to integrate it in its CRM (Customer relationship management) tools offered to clients. After the sale of the company to Carlzon beenz account holders were given a period of time to redeem their beenz before it became integrated.

In June 2008, CNET hailed Beenz as one of the greatest dotcom disasters in history. [cite web|url=http://crave.cnet.co.uk/0,39029477,49296926-7,00.htm|title=The greatest defunct Web sites and dotcom disasters|publisher=CNET|date=2008-06-05|accessdate=2008-06-05]

Partnerships

Amongst the company's partnerships was one with MasterCard enabling holders of the 'rewardz card' to transfer earned beenz to their Credit Card account. This was one of the first relationships of its kind between a traditional finance company and a dot-com enterprise.

Beenz was also once aligned with the now-defunct Speedyclick.com, which carried its own virtual currency. Beenz could be converted into SpeedyBucks, but not vice-versa.

Founders

The inventor of Beenz was Charles Cohen, from the UK. He co-founded the parent company was with former reality television star Neil Forrester, [http://computerworld.com/industrytopics/financial/story/0,10801,49034,00.html] . Nicolas De Santis joined soon after as Chief Marketing Officer and fundraiser creating the beenz currency brand vision and opening offices worldwide. He later joined opodo, the travel portal as Chief Marketing Officer.

After beenz

Cohen used his experience with Beenz.com to write a book in 2002 called "Corporate Vices: What's Gone Wrong With Business" (ISBN 978-1-84112-435-3). He now works for Probability Games Corporation in the UK.

References

ee also

* Flooz.com
* [http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/mef/beenz.shtml After beenz]

External links

* [http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/show_exhibit/beenz Ghost Sites screen shot collection] — archived screen shot of Beenz.com homepage
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/10/05/beenz_com_sold_in_multimillion/ Beenz.com sold in multi-million dollar deal]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/423369.stm Beenz currency gives millions away by mistake]
* [http://cstjanster.idg.se/sprakwebben/ord.asp?b=B Glossary explaining beenz (in Swedish)]
* [http://www.probability.tv/about.html Probability Games Corporation]