Upper West RESTAURANT

In 2014, a friend’s restaurant was looking to stand out amongst the 72,000 eateries in Los Angeles. To help him, we took out an ad in the Los Angeles Times congratulating the Los Angeles Lakers on a their playoff run, one catch — Lakers didn’t make the playoffs that year, the Los Angeles Clippers did. The good folks at Upper West were just too focused on making amazing food to pay attention to anything else.

The original newspaper ad (yes, newspaper) that cost $441.26.

People noticed and the ad blew up on social media.

It then moved beyond social media to become a reported story, eventually making its way onto Sportscenter.

The case study: