A previously reported Monday, JetBlue hosted a Twitter-based “scavenger hunt” today for their followers in New York to celebrate the airline’s 10th Anniversary. Wow, has it been 10 years since I first flew them on a marine biology trip to Florida in high school!?
Usually a scavenger hunt involves something along the lines of clues leading to more clues that lead to your final destination/find…not simply, “We’re here at X street now, bring us a birthday card!” Nonetheless, the airline gave out 1,000 free tickets today on the streets of NYC, which is a pretty sweet deal and a great example of the guerrilla work brands can accomplish by docking their efforts successfully online.
Most Snuggies in a Single Room: Not only do they have LeBron (we say this like we know what we’re talking about), but the Cleveland Cavaliers want to have a Guinness World Record, too; this Friday, the Cavs are giving out Snuggies to every audience member in attempt to set “the largest gathering of people wearing fleece blankets” record. Total bummer alert: the people have to give the Snuggies back! What are you going to do with 20,562 gently-used Snuggies, Cavs?
Word Nerds, Read On: The American Dialect Society voted on the words of the year and the decade…yawn. But they also voted on the most creative word of the year: Dracula sneeze (def: covering your mouth with your elbow when sneezing), most unnecessary word: sea kittens (def: a fish), and they weigh in on the twenty-ten vs. two-thousand-and-ten controversy (spoiler alert: twenty-ten wins). You can read all about it here.
The Type is IN: Check out this series of typefaces created in honor of Project Runway. Our favorite: “Where’s Andrae?” In fact, we love it so much, we want to take it on a date to Red Lobster.
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The latest in brand-boosting Twitter stunts is the first-ever “twéance” - an interactive séance that will be taking place on Twitter the day before Halloween (October 30).
U.K.-based Halloween costume store FancyDress.com is the force behind @tweance, which will enable Twitter users to communicate with deceased celebrities via popular British psychic medium Jayne Wallace and, perhaps, meander onto FancyDress.com to scour their assortment of Simon Cowell face masks.
Pretty spooky stuff. But I guess we can say the stunt is working, since it’s already creating quite a buzz on our side of the pond. More importantly, this little shenanigan revealed (was I the only one not in-the-know on this one?) that the social media-savvy psychics among us have been using Twitter as a fortune-telling medium long before FancyDress.com cooked up their little plan (you better be good, @earthshod!).
Which deceased celeb would you want to summon via @tweance? I’m thinking Princess Di. I want all the juicy details of her “murder” (now that she probably knows whether it was really set up or just an accident). The answer to that one should create quite the global stir!
Quick show of hands: how many people’s parents met when their father started dating 25 women simultaneously and while going on a series of romantic “dream dates” that involved things like magic carpet rides and eating blackberries at the mouth of an active volcano?
None? Surprising, since it seems like the cultural juggernaut that is ABC’sThe Bachelor/Bachelorette has a strong track record of setting up relationships built on a foundation of mutual interests, love of attention, and a high tolerance for humiliation.
Here is the shorthand on this season:
Jason Mesnick, a single dad who hates wearing shirts, is searching for love.
25 single women vie for his attention, including one lady who believes that they should be together because her “vision boards” say they should. (A vision board is a series of magazine clippings that are pasted onto a giant piece of paper and provide inspiration — but just end up looking like a ransom note you send to yourself.)
The show comes down to Molly — the spunky midwesterner who wears entirely too much eye makeup — and Melissa — a Texan whose parents refused to meet Jason because they think The Bachelor is ridiculous.
Anyway, last night Jason picked Melissa and they were happy for about 45 minutes until The Bachelor: After the Final Rose came on immediately after and Jason dumped Melissa for Molly.
But wait, is it all a setup to generate buzz for the show? Reality Steve seems to think so, claiming that ABC made Jason choose Melissa just so that he could dump her and create DRAAAA-MAAA.
Did it work?
Yes, it was a ratings bonanza, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Trista and Ryan tied the knot on TV. Plus, there are currently more than 2 million tweets about The Bachelor and Jason. And, a bit of anecdotal evidence: 27 of my Facebook friends currently have Bachelor-related status updates.
Face facts, sometimes there is a tragedy so great that it brings everybody in the entire world together.
Friday Fun: Snowboarding, NYC, Energy Drinks and the Internet
Now you may be wondering what snowboarding, New York City, energy drinks and the Internet have to do with each other. Plenty, according to the zany brains at Red Bull Energy Drinks.
Yesterday the brand hosted Red Bull Snowscrapers, a giant jump competition in East River Park. “Snowboarding in New York City?!?” They must have had one too many of their caffeine heart-attack inducing drinks. Perhaps, but they did pull it off. Being that it was the right temperature for a winter sporting event, a balmy 10 degrees or so, I was not in attendance.
The cool, Internet-related portion of the event lived on the event’s website. Not only could fans go online and get information about the event, the participants and see video and photos, but those (like myself) unable to brave the cold or out of the geographic area could watch it live.
While this is certainly not the first time sporting events have been streamed live online, it was a cool way for a brand to extend the reach of its event.
A few things you might not know about Christian Bale: his mom was a professional clown (yikes), he was the original spokesperson for “Pac-Man the Cereal,” and he became a vegetarian after reading Charlotte’s Web.
Something you probably do know about Christian Bale: He is absolutely crazy in a Naomi Campbell / Bill O’Reilly (NSFW) kind of way. How do you know this? Because you probably watched this video (NSFW) of him going nutz (that’s right, he is so nutz that he cannot conform to traditional rules of spelling and grammar) on the set of his new film The Terminator.
As you probably know, his language could peel paint. Here is an excerpt; I’ve replaced all of the expletives with the word “pepperoni”:
“I’m going to pepperoni your pepperoni pepperoni. I want you off the pepperoni set, you pepperoni pepperoni. No! Don’t just be sorry! Think for one pepperoni second!”
But wait! Could La Bale be gaming us, the moviegoing lemmings of the American populace? Stan Schroeder at Mashable, for one, thinks that this is nothing more than a viral marketing stunt. Think what you will, but up until Monday, I had no idea that they were even making a new Terminator movie.
This Valentine’s Day, a partnership between Conde Nast’s Brides.com and Mogulus will bring an all-day marriage-a-thon that takes place atop the Empire State Building to the online community. MediaPost reports that those wishing to view the “Wedding Extravaganza” can do so via live streaming video.
Call me unsentimental, but to me this feels like the Groundhog Day of wedding celebrations. I will, however, be checking out Mogulus for other live feeds.
When Brad and I went over to Shake Shack for lunch today, we stumbled upon an interesting publicity stunt called the “Unbreakable Kiss” in Madison Square Park, done by A Diamond Is Forever. During several evenings this week, people can pose (kissing is encouraged, but not mandatory) under a diamond-shaped wreath made of mistletoe and a snazzy circle of cameras will take their photo for a 360-degree, Matrix-style view. Apparently, Penelope Cruz was even there on Monday to kick off the installation.
Improv Everywhere’s latest stunt involved welcoming random strangers home when they arrived at the airport. I think the most interesting part is that this video was actually commissioned by Absolut Vodka and features some Absolut branding at the end. I was wondering how long it would take for companies to start collaborating with Improv Everywhere for promotional purposes, since their stunts are always spot-on and usually go viral.
Those “would-be good Samaritans” who pick them up find a note inside telling them that “The King” wants them to keep the contents of the wallet for themselves. Each wallet contains a different set of offerings. Cash (ranging from $1 to $100 bills), Burger King gift cards, “The King’s” driver’s license and maps featuring nearby Burger King restaurants have all been found in these abandoned wallets.
Pretty sweet deal! Interestingly, Burger King hasn’t done any press around the stunt, keeping it totally grassroots.
Remember when Dr. Pepper promised a free Dr. Pepper to every American when Guns N’ Roses released their new album Chinese Democracy? Well that day has FINALLY come, but will it inspire brand loyalty to the soda?
Remember when Radioheadlet people choose how much they wanted to pay for their latest album, In Rainbows? Call it a publicity stunt or an innovative business model, but In Rainbows sold better than their last album, and was No. 1 in both the U.K. and U.S. for the first three months; it was played 17 million times on Last.FM, and even to this day it’s in the Top 200 in the U.K. and U.S., as far as sales of the physical CD go. As if they weren’t already the best band in the world.
To promote the DVD release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Papa John’s is offering a free XL Explorer Pizza to everyone in America who shares the title of “Dr. Jones.” Of the more than 1.3 million Americans with the surname Jones, an estimated 1,600 have advanced doctoral degrees. Additionally, those Dr. Joneses living in Indiana will also get a free copy of the DVD.
