People today are a little too jumpy for their own good. It doesn’t help that we’ve got “privacy” scanners and crazy color-coded terrorists threats (how do they pick the most threatening color anyway?) I mean, I can understand the craziness when we’re being taught by the media to fear everything and everyone. Think about the last time you were at the airport, how many times did you hear the announcement that alert security to any abandoned bags or boxes? So when P&G started up a new promotion this past week that entailed leaving large wooden locked crates in the middle of public areas, people (and the police) didn’t respond too kindly.
According to AdAge, “The suspect crates were intended to be a teaser promotion for P&G's biggest-ever sweepstakes in Brazil, called ‘P&G Faustão's Airplane.’” (Article Link) As part of the promotion, prizes were described to fill up an airplane, so the promotion team though the image of air-dropped crates would help the public connect the boxes with the promotion.
Well, it didn’t work. The bomb squad was called in to two different locked crates, opened both crates and announced that nothing was in the boxes.
Maybe if the boxes had a parachute attached to them somewhere nearby (like a real air-dropped package) or if there was a P&G logo somewhere. Or maybe they could have contacted the right people to give the authorities a heads up.
That’s where P&G’s promotions team made a big boo-boo. Apparently there were multiple promotion teams hired to carry out this event. One of the teams, NewStyle even tried to get a permit, but guess what, they were denied. Imagine that! Can’t imagine why a lone, locked-wooden box would invoke the fear of thousands of people?
Not that it stopped the team, they went ahead with the promotion anyway. Forget any ethical codes code of honesty, integrity, and “do no harm”.
I just love how some people don’t take the time to think something through, and the impact that it can have. When you start the process of planning an ad, or a promotion, or even a press release, you’ve got to keep in mind current events that can impact your campaign (like in this case freaking everyone out).
Update: P&G has pulled the locked-box stunt for now, maybe next time they’ll think a little longer about and won’t have their promotions mistaken for a terrorist device.
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