Publicity Stunts - The Art of the Prank

March 30, 2019December 15, 2023

Microsoft Preemptively Forfeits 4/1 Prank War

Large tech companies aren’t popular right now, and their branded April Fools’ Day stunts haven’t been well received in awhile. So Microsoft has banned all 4/1 hijinks, shenanigans, and monkeyshines, company-wide. Or – sigh – maybe it’s a setup.

“Microsoft exec bans company from pulling any dumb April Fools’ pranks”
By Peter Bright
Ars Technica
March 27, 2019

April 1 has long been a spectacularly annoying day to be alive, with brands falling over themselves to be “funny” and usually revealing themselves to be anything but. This was almost tolerable in the days when we were talking simply fake advertisements in print media, but it has taken on a new dimension online, as companies have actually modified the services that we rely on daily in an attempt to be “funny.”

This was particularly striking in Google’s 2016 mic drop feature on Gmail, where clicking the “mic drop” button sent a recipient a gif of a Despicable Me minion—a vile affront to humanity in and of itself—and then muted and archived the conversation, thus hiding any responses to it. Cue widespread complaints from users who clicked the button by accident, denying themselves jobs and offending their bosses.

Microsoft, for one, wants no part of this. In a move that can only be welcomed, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela sent a company-wide e-mail (leaked to the Verge) imploring staff to refrain from creating any public-facing April Fools’ Day stunts. Capossela writes that according to the company’s data, the stunts have “limited positive impact” and can result in “unwanted news cycles.” Read more.

March 24, 2019December 15, 2023

Volunteer Trash Art

“Trucks of Art” is a contest seeking volunteer artists to paint New York City’s recycling trucks to promote sustainable living.

Sanitation Dept. Launches ‘Trucks Of Art’ Contest For Trash Vehicles
CBS New York
March 15, 2019

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – New York’s Department of Sanitation wants to transform its fleet of recycling trucks into works of art. The agency announcing the launch of its “Trucks Of Art” project and contest.

To enter, the Sanitation Department is asking volunteer artists to submit their ideas for how they would redesign the drab, 23-ton collection trucks into inspiring works of art.

The agency says that they want the newly designed trucks to inspire people and to promote sustainable living.

DSNY’s executive director Robin Brooks talks with CBSN New York’s Dana Tyler about the new project and contest.

For more information on how to enter a design, see the Department of Sanitation website.

February 9, 2019December 15, 2023

Confessions of a Rock and Roll Poser

Last autumn, Jered “Threatin” Eames staged the most alienating, least explicable rock tour stunt since the Sex Pistols hit the deep south. He recently broke his silence.

“The Great Heavy Metal Hoax”
by David Kushner
Rolling Stone
December 14, 2018

In November, managers of rock clubs across the United Kingdom began sharing the same weird tale. A pop-metal performer, Threatin, had rented their clubs for his 10-city European tour. Club owners had never heard of the act when a booking agent approached them promising packed houses. Threatin had fervent followers, effusive likes, rows of adoring comments under his YouTube concert videos, which showed him windmilling before a sea of fans. Websites for the record label, managers and a public-relations company who represented Threatin added to his legitimacy. Threatin’s Facebook page teemed with hundreds of fans who had RSVP’d for his European jaunt, which was supporting his album, Breaking the World.

But despite all the hype, almost no one came to the shows. It was just Threatin and his three-piece band onstage, and his wife, Kelsey, filming him from the empty floor. And yet Threatin didn’t seem to care — he just ripped through a set as if there was a full house. When confronted by confused club owners, Threatin just shrugged, blaming the lack of audience on bad promotion. “It was clear that something weird was happening,” says Jonathan “Minty” Minto, who was bartending the night Threatin played at the Exchange, a Bristol club, “but we didn’t realize how weird.” Intrigued, Minto and his friends started poking around Threatin’s Facebook page, only to find that most of the fans lived in Brazil. “The more we clicked,” says Minto, “the more apparent it became that every single attendee was bogus.”

It all turned out to be fake: The websites, the record label, the PR company, the management company, all traced back to the same GoDaddy account. The throngs of fans in Threatin’s concert videos were stock footage. The promised RSVPs never appeared. When word spread of Threatin’s apparent deception, club owners were perplexed: Why would someone go to such lengths just to play to empty rooms? Read more.

December 19, 2018December 15, 2023

Improv Everywhere: The Giant Boom Box

Note from Editor Joey Skaggs: This brings back fond memories of my 1978 Disco Radio, a 4 foot by 2 foot by 8 foot wide radio on wheels, built by my New York SVA students for a class project. It was a commentary on the proliferation of loud disco radios blaring music throughout the streets of New York at that time. Students dressed in costumes, each with their own disco radio, wheeled the giant radio into Washington Square Park where they played music matching their costumed characters, all at the same time.

Charlie Todd’s wonderfully sweet Giant Boombox event, sponsored by Target, looks a lot less noisy!

Improv Everywhere’s Giant Boombox

We placed a 10-foot tall boombox on Pier 17 in Manhattan and waited for unsuspecting people to plug it in. Real New Yorkers worked together to carry the 160-foot long cord across the pier to an oversized outlet.

Once the boombox was plugged in, everyone was surprised by a massive holiday dance party with 100 acrobatic dancers, thousands of Christmas lights placed on two historic ships, and 10 hidden snow machines.

For more photos and a look behind the scenes at how this event came together, visit https://improveverywhere.com/2018/12/17/the-giant-boombox/.

Music to Whose Ears?

A mystery tour with fake websites, fake audiences, fake interviews, fake music label, fake management, fake video production company and at least one really good musician.

As Jered Threatin (if that’s his real name) says… “What is Fake News? I turned an empty room into an international headline. If you are reading this, you are part of the illusion.”

The Story of Threatin, a Most Puzzling Hoax Even for 2018
by Jonah Engel Bromwich
The New York Times
November 16, 2018

A rock band went on tour in the U.K. and nobody came. Then it got weird.

In April, Jered Threatin began to hold auditions for a backing band. He chose three musicians and told them they would embark on an all-expenses paid European tour with his band, Threatin.

The first stop was The Underworld in London. Someone representing Threatin had paid £780 (roughly $1,010) to book it for the night of Nov. 1 and told Patrice Lovelace, an in-house promoter at the club, that the band had sold 291 tickets for the show.

But when the band went on, there were only three people in the audience.

“It was only on show day when no customer list for the 291 customers was produced that we realized we’d been duped,” Ms. Lovelace said. “The show went ahead with only the supports, staff and crew in attendance. The bar made almost zero money, and it was all extremely bizarre. And empty, obviously.”

The next few gigs were similarly barren. After a show at The Exchange in Bristol on Nov. 5, for which a promoter claimed to have sold 182 tickets, staff at the venue decided to investigate the band. After all, someone had paid more than $500 to book the venue.

Nearly everything associated with Threatin, it would turn out, was an illusion. Iwan Best, a venue manager at The Exchange, said they found that each of the websites associated with Threatin — the band’s “label” Superlative Music Recordings; its management company, Aligned Artist Management; and the video production company that directed the band’s video — were all registered to the same GoDaddy account. (The pages were built under a parent site seemingly associated with Superlative Music, the fake label.)

Watch the “Living is Dying” music video

Continue reading “Music to Whose Ears?”