The Brand That Mailed Free Stickers to Strangers in 2010 Now Has a Federal Trademark and Billions of Impressions

Before influencers, before growth hacking, before "community building" was a job title, one founder did it with an envelope and a stamp.

In 2010, if you found This Is A Good Sign on Facebook and sent Eric Dennis your mailing address, he would send you free stickers. Not as a promotion. Not as a calculated acquisition strategy. Because that is how you spread a message before you have a budget, and Dennis had a message he believed in and no budget to speak of.

That was the beginning. What followed was 15 years of the same instinct: reach people directly, give them something physical, and let the message do the work.

Today, This Is A Good Sign holds a federal trademark. It has 21,389 Facebook followers and a 16-year-old Instagram presence. It has generated billions of physical impressions through stickers, shirts, signs, and real-world placements across the country. It has never run a paid advertisement.

"I mailed stickers to people I'd never met because I wanted the sign to be everywhere. That was the whole strategy. Put it in the world and see where it goes."

Eric Dennis, Founder, This Is A Good Sign

Dennis drove the "Good Signs 2010 Promotion Tour" across the country in March 2010, taking the message on the road before the brand had an audience or a product line. By 2012, the community had grown enough to earn a name: Good Sign Nation. By 2015, Dennis had launched a Kickstarter campaign, using it not just to raise funds but to publicly acknowledge every backer by name.

The brand's revenue over its lifetime totals approximately $50,000, entirely bootstrapped. Every dollar came from someone who found the brand, believed in the message, and chose to buy something. No media buy. No influencer deal. No algorithm spend.

In an era when brands measure success in cost-per-click and return on ad spend, the This Is A Good Sign story is a direct counter-example. A sticker mailed in 2010 to a stranger in a state Dennis had never visited could still be on a laptop or a bumper today. That impression cost the price of postage.

"The stickers were the whole brand in miniature. Small, real, physical. You put it somewhere and it stays there. That's what 'Sign the Planet' means."

Eric Dennis, Founder, This Is A Good Sign