Thursday, February 19, 2004

Move over Britney and Madonna, there's a new PR queen in town

Debate has been raging about whether Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' was in fact a well/ill-chosen (delete according to today's whim) PR stunt. Ad Age recently featured an article from a PR firm praising it as a stunt saying 'It raises the bar for all of us' in a nice bit of PR for his agency who I've already forgotten the name of.

Despite an unlikely reported 200,000 complaints (that's some serious switchboard action), she has got her conveniently timed single to the no.1 slot, leaving us to wonder whether this is finally proof of the old PR adage that no publicity is bad publicity.

All this leaves me wondering just how long it will be until we start getting waves of publicity-desperate celebrity streakers?

What's that? Oh, yes... Jordan.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

The publicity gravy train

Is it just me or does E-bay's publicity machine just keep rolling out the same story over and over again with no sign of media weariness? The dot com success story is in the press every other week for endless subtle twists on the 'someone sells something weird on E-bay' story. Great kudos for their PR agency and early to the pub for the hack in question (and good luck to them both).

One look today reveals Germans selling tanks online and a Bristol University student auctioning her virginity online (surely the Britney $7m bid a few years ago scooped this one?).

Monday, February 09, 2004

What next, cholesterol-reducing cholesterol?

Birthdays can be sobering times. Before you know it, you're the wrong side of 30 and looking down the barrel of belly expansion, high cholesterol and dodgy knees.

To counter the inevitable, I've started to take an interest in those little yoghurt things and Benecol spreads that all claim to lower my double-cream and red meat-fueled cholesterol levels, but now even my bread is chipping in with the goal of batting my poor health into the next 30 years through an attack on all fronts.

It all makes me wonder whether in the future even my cholesterol is going to start reducing my cholesterol levels?

Friday, February 06, 2004

Janet Jackson goes tits up

For once Wacko Jacko has found himself upstaged on the bad publicity front by his own sister, Janet. Her crime? The cardinal sin for our friends across the pond of exposing a breast.

For the nation that airbrushes out the infinitely corrupting nipple out of its quasi-porn men's lifestyle magazine segment, exposure on the TV holy grail superbowl slot has induced mass hysteria. For those of us this side of the pond, we can only wonder at the damage done to the youth by the tassled mammory gland and hope that the hideous image is soon erased by a daily diet of screen violence.

In fact, she has made internet history as the most searched-for name of all time, pipping the mighty Britney and even Paris Hilton's promotional video, according to the Search Engine Journal. Let's just be grateful she didn't display the full set or George W would have had to invade.