Dell Employees Arrested Over Incredibly Stupid Marketing Stunt

from the faux-hostage-taking-is-not-a-good-idea dept

In the long list of really bad marketing ideas, I'd have to say that "pretending to take an entire office hostage to celebrate the release of a new product" may be somewhere near the top. However, that's what two Dell marketing employees thought to do -- and since they were the only two who knew about the plan (which involved one of them dressed up as a "biker with a black mask" carrying "mysterious metal objects" and then ordering the entire office to "go to the lobby"), employees, naturally, got upset. Some called the police, who responded to what certainly could appear to be a hostage situation. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but the two guys were arrested, and now face misdemeanor charges. I'm reminded of the story a few years ago in Boston where glowing signs of Adult Swim characters were misinterpreted as bombs, shutting down much of the city of Boston. In that case, however, there was a massive overreaction, where the mayor wanted to ban all "guerrilla marketing." Of course, there was a pretty big difference in that situation: the marketers in that case didn't think they were placing something that looked like "bombs." They were just placing funky LED signs.

Filed Under: marketing, stunts
Companies: dell

Consumer 'Watchdog' Anti-Google Video Just Part Of A Stunt To Sell Books?

from the who's-watching-those-consumers dept

There was all sorts of news coverage recently about the group Consumer Watchdog creating a video that mocked Google's Eric Schmidt for not caring about your privacy -- though, which did so by getting all sorts of basic facts wrong and while relying on the "evil" Google Analytics for its own site (though, the group claims it's been trying to get rid of it, and has tried to spin the story into a claim that shows "how hard it is to escape Google on the Internet." Actually, it's not that hard at all. The whole thing seemed pretty silly, and clearly a stupid promotional stunt.

It seems that folks associated with Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court are perfectly willing to admit that the whole thing is a crass stunt to help Jamie sell more of his new book. They've sent over a letter to us, hyping up Court's book, offering to send us a copy, and linking the recently released book to the "stunt" in Times Square, which they blatantly admit was a stunt. So, now, who's going to watch over Consumer Watchdog to make sure it's not engaged in questionable motives in its own activities? I'm all for people actually looking out for consumer rights, but sometimes I wonder who appointed these folks as our "watchdogs?"

Filed Under: eric schmidt, jamie court, privacy, stunts
Companies: consumer watchdog, google

Sneakernet, Pigeonet And The Meaninglessness Of Judging Broadband By Silly Stunts

from the so-what? dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in this story about how a carrier pigeon beat a broadband line in transferring 4 gigs of data between two offices 60 miles apart. The problem with such stunts is that they're rather meaningless. All you need to do is pick a storage size for the pigeon that is sufficiently large. The speed of the broadband connection is known in advance, and so you can just pick a file size that is significantly larger. Given the right sizes, I'd imagine that flying across the Atlantic with hard drives full of data is probably faster than some trans-Atlantic fiber cables as well. It doesn't mean that the cable is necessarily slow. The point is that for some things a "sneakernet" or (in this case) "pigeon net" will be faster. It does sound like the DSL connection being used was, in fact, slow, but that can be demonstrated just as easily by, I don't know, noting the actual bandwidth of the connection. I guess, as a publicity stunt, it draws attention, but I can't see how it's really that meaningful.

Filed Under: broadband, pigeons, stunts