How do you think not just like a marketer, but like a promoter? Look to legendary manager Shep Gordon. When he was promoting Alice Cooper’s 1972 album “School’s Out” he set out to make a big impact. So he had each vinyl record wrapped in a pair of cheap paper panties.
Separately, he ordered a small amount of highly flammable paper panties, knowing these would be considered a hazard and cause a scene at the US Border. He tipped off the Washington Post, who showed up to capture it all and published a front-page article titled “The Largest Panty Raid in History”. The publicity stunt helped the album shoot to #2 and made Alice Cooper a household name.
What’s a fun, big idea you’ve had? Did you actually do it? How did it go?
Here was a fun one we did at 2017’s Tortuga Music Festival. We ordered a plane banner to circle around Luke Bryan’s & Brett Eldredge’s sold out show for two hours. The message: “For a good time call Brett Eldredge 904-592-9672”. When you called a hilarious message Brett recorded for us played, mentioning how he couldn’t wait to “See you at Tortuga Music Festival this April!”
Another one I just remembered – we created trippy artwork of our artist’s faces playing the 2015 Pemberton Music Festival. Over the course of a week, we projected these faces across random trees in downtown Vancouver, only referencing “whatdoesthetreesay.com”…no mention of the festival at all. On that website, we played a playlist of our lineup, animating the faces of the artists as the songs played. A small button “Hear these songs live” led back to our main festival website.
What’s your “Paper Panties” idea? Let me know in the comments!
