The approach put forward here is not exactly new - if you read Ash Maurya's Running Lean (http://www.runningleanhq.com) he talks extensively on using a rich landing page (rather than a 'viral' launchrock-style page) to accelerate validated learning. The classic DropBox video example is another piece of classic Lean case material. What these both somewhat lack is the 'P' of MVP. Product.
I'd suggest this is 'practical application of Lean Startup principles' rather than MVP - people tend to talk about 'building their MVP' and that process hasn't begun in this case. Validated learning is critical, and getting a headstart on it in this way is a useful technique, but blurring the distinction of early-stage customer development and the actual MVP doesn't help the discussion. It makes the conversation around desirable qualities of a public MVP somewhat harder.
This?
> We did everything possible to not show that we hadn't even started the back-end yet.
Is testing marketing and UI design. Which is great. But it's not an MVP.
Rather than reject techniques like this because they're not technically products, I think we should expand the concept of MVP to include things like this because they serve the same purpose: learning about your market, reducing risk, validating ideas.
One drawback to this approach is that it may give you false negatives. What if you landing page copy doesn't work or your AdWords copy is wrong? As with all lean/custdev hacks ymmv. Bottom line is you need to find customers to talk to, otherwise everything is an assumption.
Some other articles that touch on this approach:
http://startupbound.com/how-i-quickly-test-and-validate-star...
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-t...
http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/customer-developm...
there should be another name for this. MVI maybe? minimum viable idea?
Using minimal without viable is somewhat strange. If you look at a program: What is minimal? Hello World? No, I can still do "int main(){ }"! But wait, this still does a context switch... IMO it just does not make sense to say something is "minimal" (but not viable). it's better to say there is viable and not viable and within viable thing, you can head for minimal, too.
So the circle on the left contains minimum (crappy as they indicate) products and the circle on the right contains products that are all viable - some overdone perhaps.
I'm not sure why it wouldn't make sense that something is minimal but not viable. Any product that can't sell because it is too minimal would fit there.
And the intersection that they are showing is in fact what you are describing: viable and within viable, also minimal. In other words, the most minimal of the viable.
FWIW: Tarantino & Rodriguez's movie _Grindhouse_ included several fake movie trailers. They were so popular that _Machete_ and _Hobo_With_A_Shotgun_ were turned into real movies with good boxoffice returns; more such projects are underway.
