Ten Outrageous Marketing Stunts

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In 1978, WKRP in Cincinnati, a classic television sitcom about a dysfunctional radio station, aired its most popular episode ever, Turkey Drop. As a promotional stunt, the station's incompetent manager hires a helicopter to toss live turkeys over the city on Thanksgiving Day. After this fiasco backfires with bloody results, the manager, Arthur Carlson, replies, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

Carlson was not the first manager, real or fictional, and certainly will not be the last, to grossly misjudge the razor line between buzz and bust when it comes to offbeat marketing campaigns. When these crazy stunts work, they can be very successful attention-getters, often resulting in millions of dollars in free advertising. When they fail, they can cause spectacular embarrassment, cost jobs, and even attract lawsuits.

Several of history's most outrageous marketing stunts are chronicled in Getting Into Guinness, my recent book on the cultural impact of Guinness World Records, which itself started out as a promotional gimmick. The beer giant thus spawned an entire genre of marketing stunts. Here's a list of what are arguably the most bizarre.

1. BUST: The Boston Bomb Scare
In a January 2007 attempt to create a guerilla marketing promotion for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Turner Broadcasting System's Cartoon Network commissioned backpack-sized devices with wires on the back and lights on the front capable of displaying a moving picture image. These were then placed around various spots in Boston. Unfortunately, many people took them for bombs. Boston officials have said that as many as 38 of the devices were planted in key spots around the city, but it only took the discovery of a few--in a train station, hospitals and on bridges--to cause a War of the Worlds-sized panic, sending the Boston Police's bomb squad out on full alert. Boat traffic was blocked from Boston Harbor, and the Pentagon had the US Northern Command in Colorado Springs monitoring the threat. The devices were also planted in nine other major US cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. As soon as mayhem erupted, Turner gave the locations of all the devices to authorities, and instructed the third party marketing company it had contracted for the stunt to end it immediately. CNN quoted Boston-based Congressman Ed Markey as saying, "It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt." He added, "Whoever thought this up needs to find another job." Indeed, Jim Samples, General Manager of Cartoon Network, resigned in the wake of the promotion.

2. BUZZ: Nathan's Doc-Approved Dogs
Nathan's Famous is arguably the nation's best known hot dog chain, all grown from a single restaurant in New York's Coney Island. But it wasn't always that way. When immigrant Nathan Handwerker, an employee at the very successful Coney Island fast food eatery Feltman's, went out on his own and opened a competitor, he had problems. First, he tried to undercut his old boss on price, but only succeeded in making customers skeptical of the quality. Next, he tried hiring bums to stand around and make his place look busy, but the public saw through that too. Next, depending on which version of the story is to believed, he either had the bums dress as doctors, or in the more believable and widely offered version, simply offered free food to doctors and nurses when in uniform, which made sense given the proximity of hospitals. Either way, the public quickly came to identify Nathan's with medical professionals, an association Nathan capitalized on by erecting a sign that read "If doctors eat our hot dogs, you know they're good!" Today, just the original Nathans sells over one million hot dogs each year. Feltman's is long gone.

3. BUST: Last Days of Disco
Popular stunts can backfire, as the Chicago White Sox found out in 1979 when they staged a now-infamous "Disco Demolition Night." Fans were urged to bring in vinyl disco LP records in exchange for 98 cent admission to a double-header, with the knowledge that the records would be collected and blown up in between games. Team management hoped to bring in an additional 5,000 spectators, but 75,000 showed up. Many of them resorted to scaling walls and fences when turned away. After the first game, a local radio personality detonated the box of records with a bomb, and immediately spectators rioted onto the field, ripping up the bases, destroying the batting cages, and sending the players fleeing. The home team Sox forfeited the second game, and riot police had to come and disperse the crowd. This promotion came just five years after the Cleveland Indians' Ten Cent Beer Night promotion, which more than tripled the average attendance but also ended in a riot, destruction to the stadium, numerous injuries to players and fans, and forfeit of the game itself.