Archive for the ‘publicity-stunts’ Category

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Flo and Lucky: Movie Dogs Take PR Tour

August 29, 2007

Yes, it’s truly the dog days of summer.

Flo and Lucky, the adorable black Labs of the Motion Picture Association of America, are doing the perfect PR tour.  A story about them ran on CBS Radio and they were featured sniffing out DVDs in luggage on the NBC morning show (Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA, has the sense to stand back and let the dogs upstage him).  The dogs even made the New York Times with their anti-piracy pitch.  (BTW, note the horrendous decline of copyediting in the so-called ‘newspaper of record’–the paper claims the dog’s handler, Neil Powell, is from “Newcastle, Northern Island.”)  Perhaps it was the IRT terrorists who battled for control of Northern Island?

Yes, Flo and Lucky and the perfect spokesdogs for the MPAA.  They’re adorable, and they don’t say anything (or drive drunk, flash their private parts or take drugs not prescribed by their veternarian.)  So not only can their PR handlers put words in their mouths, they never have to retract the dumb things they’ve said.

Lucky and Flo sniff at DVD pirates

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Seinfeld Scores With Publicity Stunt

May 31, 2007

Millions of dollars are spent on advertising, but a good publicity stunt gets attention for much less.  All it requires is clear thought and the creativity to come up with a great stunt that won’t damage your brand.

Sure, you can spend a lot of money, as did the Bee Movie producers who put Jerry Seinfeld in a bee costume and flew him down a 9-story-high wire to promote the film at Cannes. 

Jerry Seinfeld managed to rise above the competition in the hucksters' haven of Cannes yesterday. He was promoting his animated film,

But timing and chutzpah can charm the press at low cost.  Recently, tenant activists ambushed their landlord, Professor Eric Sussman, at a class he was teaching at UCLA.  They presented him with a ceramic pig for raising their rents.   The stunt resulted in an LA Times story and coverage from Long Beach to San Jose, for the cost of a bus for the tenants and ten bucks for the piggy bank. 

In 1999, FHM Magazine set a publicity stunt standard by projecting a 60-foot naked image of starlet Gail Porter on the side of the British House of Parliament.

Posted in Jerry-Seinfeld, Public Relations, publicity-stunts | No Comments »