Publicity Stunts - The Art of the Prank

June 25, 2021December 15, 2023

Proof You Can Fool Some of the People Most of the Time

Russian official admits staging bogus yeti sightings to attract tourists to Siberia, by Yaron Steinbuch, New York Post, April 9, 2021

Aman Tuleev with Vladimir Makuta (right) and a man dressed in yeti costume.

It was an abominable Russian snow job.

Aman Tuleyev — one of President Vladimir Putin’s longest-serving regional leaders — has copped to arranging bogus sightings of the yeti to attract tourists in Siberia, East2West News reported.

Tuleyev, 76, who was governor of Kemerovo Oblast from 1997 to 2018, ordered a tall bureaucrat to wear an Abominable Snowman outfit so he could be spotted in the bushes by visitors to the cash-strapped Siberian region.

Read the rest here.

April 1, 2019December 15, 2023

In Review: April Fools’ Day 2019 Branding, Marketing, and Media Stunts

Before April Fools’ Day 2019 even began, the tech giant Microsoft announced that it would not be indulging in any branded foolishness this year. And that sort of set the tone for the day.

From the rise of the internet and social media through the election of Donald Trump, distinguishing truth from fiction in the online landscape has become less about comedy and more about horror. Even the cutest and cleverest April Fools’ publicity stunts are not as well received as they may have been in the past. The overall online mood is darker, more skittish, and more reflective. Still, there’s still some levity to be found in the chaos and desperation.

A few editorials addressed the cynicism and fatigue around April Fools’ Day from high-level perspectives.

Vox published a history of branded pranks in the internet age.
GQ examined how distrust of the media has sapped some of the fun from April Fools’.

Of the branded pranks that did go down, the most interesting had satirical or meta-comedic elements.

The LA Times took a catty swipe at its cross-country rival and New York’s self-important foodie scene.
The Nectar BumbleBed mocked the eccentric fads of the underregulated “health and wellness” industry.
The language-learning app Duolingo poked fun at its own infamously pushy mascot and UX in a cleverly disturbing way.
USA Today challenged its readers to differentiate real fakes from fake fakes.

Others were just plain, dumb, silly, marginally self-aware fun. Here are the best of the rest:

From the science-and-tech world
From gaming
From reddit
From a British angle
From the desks of Time, The Verge, and The Guardian

And there was even some good news!

Burger King’s meatless Whopper is not a joke!
Pranksters and comedians are not being displaced by AI!
April Fools’ news gags can help fight malicious fake news!

As with any holiday, the best way to spend April Fools’ Day is probably not on the internet, but engaged in revelry and camaraderie IRL, fighting the forces of oppression and no-fun-ness in the company of loved ones and loved ones you haven’t met yet. So naturally the best news of the day was the annual April Fools’ Day Parade – see the highlights [HERE].

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.

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.

November 17, 2017December 15, 2023

Today In Human Head Transplants

In the “quit while you’re ahead” department…

“World’s first human head transplant a success, professor says”
By Yaron Steinbuch
New York Post
November 17, 2017

The world”s first human head transplant has been carried out on a corpse in China, according to a controversial Italian doctor who said Friday that scientists are now ready to perform the surgery on a living person.

Professor Sergio Canavero, chief of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, said the operation was carried out by a team led by Dr. Xiaoping Ren, who last year successfully grafted a head onto a monkey”s body.

“The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage,” Canavero said at a press conference in Vienna, the Telegraph reported.

“And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent,” said Canavero, who has gained a mix of fame and notoriety for his Frankenstein-like pursuits. Read more.