Imagine this: it’s the week before Black Friday, the biggest eCommerce event of the year - and I shut down my entire website.
Not “sort of locked.” Completely off.
No one could shop. No one could even see a product.
Just a black screen.
For two full days, Be Coyote, a brand I’ve built for 14 years was completely offline.
And we kept the website locked for a total of six days.
It was the riskiest marketing decision I’ve ever made.
But I did it because something had to change.
Why I did it
After more than a decade in business, I’ve seen the same Black Friday strategy play out over and over again.
Bigger discounts. Louder ads. More noise.
The problem is - everyone’s doing it.
And when everyone’s shouting, no one’s listening.
So instead of fighting for attention, I decided to take it away.
Silence became the strategy.
The goal was simple: make people stop scrolling, stop ignoring, and wonder what was happening.
The blacklist strategy
When visitors hit the site, all they saw was that one mysterious message.
If they wanted to find out more, they had to enter their email address to join The Blacklist.
This wasn’t just for drama - it was smart marketing.
We were building an email list of people who were engaged, interested, and ready to take action.
These weren’t random browsers, they were the kind of customers who convert.
For two days, no one could buy anything.
Then, everyone on the Blacklist got an email with a single word: LETMEIN.
That was the secret password that unlocked the website and early access to the Black Friday sale.
Everyone else? Still locked out.
Our website stayed closed for six full days before the sale went public.
The risk
This could have easily gone very wrong.
What if people didn’t understand?
What if they thought we’d shut down?
What if they didn’t bother signing up?
We had no guarantee that anyone would get it.
But after 14 years in this industry, I’ve learned something important: safe marketing doesn’t make people talk.
It’s the bold, slightly crazy ideas that get remembered.
The influencer strategy
To make things even more interesting (and terrifying), we involved influencers -
but not in the usual way.
We didn’t ask them to rave about the sale or post unboxing videos.
We asked them to act confused and frustrated with Be Coyote.
It sounds risky - because it was.
Who gets influencers to complain about their brand on purpose? (I did lol)
But this was planned. The goal was to create authentic curiosity.
When people saw influencers genuinely confused, they wanted answers too.
And it worked.
Engagement on social media increased. We saw a 373% increase in profile activity so we knew it was getting people's attention.
Our silence was the marketing and it was working.
The psychology behind it
This campaign worked because it tapped into three core emotions that drive attention:
Curiosity, exclusivity, and connection.
People wanted to solve the mystery.
They wanted to feel part of the “in crowd” with the password.
And once they were in, they felt like insiders, not customers.
The strategy was simple: create emotion first, sell second.
My advice to business owners
Running a business for 14 years teaches you a lot about survival.
Markets change, customers evolve, and attention gets harder to earn.
If you want to stay relevant, you have to stay alert.
Sometimes that means playing it safe, but other times, it means taking a risk big enough to make your stomach drop.
Shutting down our site for six days and having influencers post frustration could’ve destroyed us.
But instead, it made people stop, listen, and talk.
Because sometimes the best marketing move isn’t saying more -
it’s saying nothing at all.