As one man spends 127 hours in a shop window to promote a DVD, we take a look at some promotional stunts that, if not always for the right reasons, have garnered some serious media attention.
On Saturday, at 5pm, 28-year-old Luke Jones will escape incarceration after having spent 127 hours banged up in the display window of HMV in London’s Oxford Street. The reason he’s been locked away for such a specific amount of time is to celebrate the release of Danny Boyle’s survival drama, yep you guessed it, 127 Hours.
While Luke’s ordeal hasn’t been quite as arduous as the film’s subject, Aron Ralston – we’re guessing he won’t need to hack off his own arm to get out of central London – we have to tip our caps to the effort that’s gone into plugging the film. To celebrate this achievement, we’ve taken a look back at some publicity stunts that have, for good or bad, caught our attention over the years.
Eichborn to fly
As you go down this list, you’ll see some promotional ideas that are pretty cool and others that are just plain half-baked – this one is both. For some reason, German publishing house Eichborn features a house fly on its logo (nothing says good reading like a buzzing pest eh?) and they aimed to increase their brand awareness at a recent Frankfurt book fair by pasting tiny banners to actual flies and letting them loose. The result is a miniature aerial display that actually manages to be a little bit magical and cruel at the same time.
Vodafone sales pitch bares all
There’s a long-held tradition in advertising that any publicity is good publicity, but it looks like international Telecom company Vodafone took the phrase ‘product exposure’ a little too literally when they paid streakers sporting nothing but a Vodafone logo to run onto the pitch during an Australia versus New Zealand soccer match. The whole thing attracted a slew of negative press and resulted in some drawn-out court action, but at least they got a lot of media attention.
Cartoon Network’s Boom and Bust
What do you do when you want to plug your new TV show – in this case the Cartoon Network’s animated series Aqua Teen Hunger Force – in this post 9/11 world? Surely a guerrilla campaign that involves dispersing backpack-sized devices with wires sticking out of them in heavily populated spots around Boston would be a winning idea right? The 2007 stunt went badly awry when citizens took the bags for bombs and officials were called in to destroy 38 devices in one day. After the farrago, Boston-based congressman Ed Markey said, "It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt. Whoever thought this up needs to find another job." Jim Samples, General Manager of Cartoon Network, resigned in the wake of the promotion.
Taco Gets A New Bell
Ah, the great tradition of April Fool’s Day pranks. In 1996, lots of people got into a tizzy when fast-food chain Taco Bell announced it had bought and trademarked America’s iconic Liberty Bell. Heckles were raised, backs were put up and people were ready to start protesting while others looked for the keys to the gun rack, until the joke was explained and everyone had a good laugh. Burger King’s attempt a few years later to convince customers that they’d invented a left-handed burger, however, failed to be quite as convincing.
Free Cars for Everybody
If you’re looking for the exact point at which Oprah Winfrey achieved living sainthood, it’ll be the show in which she gave away a car to every person in her live studio audience. She may have failed to mention live on air General Motors’ generous donation of 276 Pontiac G6s (worth a value of nearly $8 million) and neglected to point out that each "winner" had to pay nearly $7000 tax on the vehicles (Pontiac had to go back to the till and cover the state sales tax on that one), but Oprah still managed to garner herself some seriously positive press.
Guinness is Good for Settling Arguments.
Did you know that the Guinness Book Of World Records in the third most-read tome on the planet behind the Bible and the Koran? Did you also know that the book started life as a marketing tool aimed at settling arguments in pubs? In 1954, the amusingly named Sir Hugh Beaver was Managing Director of the Arthur Guinness & Sons brewery and decided to print a record book that could be used to settle booze-fuelled bar-room debates (he was apparently inspired after over-hearing a heated argument over which of two species of birds was faster). The project was a roaring success with well over 110 million copies sold in three-dozen languages. The only possible downside is that the book is now clearly better known than the beer it was originally invented to promote.
127 Hours is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray now.
Want more?
- Check out the 127 Hours challenge live stream
- Official 127 Hours website
- Follow Glen Ferris on Twitter
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