Spending as much time as I have with the ghosts of movie publicity whilst researching my book, I have recognized that they all understood or had the bitter experience of the fame cycle. I stumbled upon this scrap of wisdom that perhaps the faded Britney Spears should have known. “Success is ephemeral, failure is inevitable…
I am currently researching the studio PR men that created Jean Harlow. It’s an extraordinary story that would make a contemporary star maker blush. Harlow knew the power of her sexuality and manipulated it to great effect. One of her many tricks to create an entrance was to put ice on her nipples right before…
I see Lindsay Lohan has been admitted to treatment again… is anyone with a pulse actually interested? It really underlines the point that Ms Lohan’s publicist must really be clutching at straws if this is the best they can come up with. If we go back to the great Hollywood publicists, we could learn some…
Following the destruction of the career of MGM actor William Haines, who refused to end his relationship with his gay lover Jimmy Shields and enter into a “lavender marriage” on the request of MGM, a spate of such marriages occurred so gay and lesbian couples could seek refuge in this institution. A lavender marriage is…
The publicity stunt is not a tool used only by wily pr’s but has been taken on board by certain weird religious groups to further their following. For example, in 1967, Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan baptized his daughter Zeena at the Black House. This was a Victorian mansion that stood…
Leafing through a set of files, I am reminded about how the publicity stunts have been dwindling over the years, probably because people are too straight laced or uptight when it comes to taking risks. Max Rosey was the genius behind many a PR stunt. Rosey was the legendary New York PR man who put…
From “When Elephants Ski – The Publicity Stunt Is an Institution as American as, Well, the President by Peter Carlson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 1, 2004 Aaron Cushman, is a legendary Chicago PR man and author of a 2003 memoir, “A Passion for Winning: Fifty Years of Promoting Legendary People and Products.”…
Annual events that we all know and love, especially those in the U.S., began more often than not, as cheap publicity stunts. The Miss America pageant started as a stunt to lure tourists to Atlantic City in 1921. The stunts became so shameless in their purpose, that by the late 1920’s the American Association of…
In the 1950’s, the Hollywood producer, William Castle, became so frustrated by the lack of PR ingenuity and the general disinterest from publicists to plug his movies, that he started to concoct his own publicity stunts. His 1958 movie “Macabre” starring William Prince and Jim Backus received the familiar, “don’t ring us, we’ll ring you”, so…
Following on from my blog Mark My Words, about stunts and stories being done before, the idea to pander to animals and treat them like humans (for example, the well publicised dog wedding that one of my consumer teams organised for Harrods’ “Anything is Possible” campaign) has been around for decades. Way back in 1951,…