Yesterday’s post made me wax nostalgic and think of famous tech PR stunts, especially those which hijacked the big industry events, like CES and the former Comdex show.
Certainly, I have been involved in my share of PR stunts (could we think of another phrase for this? PR spectacle, maybe? “PR stunt” sounds so lurid and decadent). At Fusion PR, our clients tend to be start ups, and generally are not the big brands with big budgets that have been behind some of the more extravagant and outrageous affairs.
I have been in the IT industry for quite some time, and tried to think back about some of the stunts orchestrated by Oracle and Sun, for example. We have a number of ex-IBMers on our management team (myself included). I asked them and they seemed to recall many of these types of things but not any one in particular.
So I did a Web search and same up with some interesting things:
From the Network World archives (via Google Books search) I found an article from 1999:
Who said penguins can’t fly? A trio of skydivers literally dropped in on [Comdex] to promote Linux. TurboLinux sponsored the jump into the parking lot at the Las Vegas Hilton as a way to highlight its TurboCluster product and introduce CEO Cliff Miller, who then flapped his wings about Linux, open source and the enterprise.
From the Java Lobby blog (and in the same approximate era):
It was funny in 1998 or 1999 when Microsoft paid people to dress up (or maybe that was just SF finery) and write anti java things on the sidewalks around Moscone during JavaOne. The writings were colorful chalk and had a wacky sense of whimsy to them.
I also found this cool post on Taylor Herring’s blog: Publicity stunts Hall of Fame. It lists quite a few (mostly non tech) examples and has funny pictures to go along.
