Russell Birdwell the great movie PR man was reportedly responsible for some of the most influential cultural engineering of his time. Texas-born Birdwell was a newspaper reporter working the Hollywood beat before breaking into show business around 1925. He was a mighty myth maker and it was he who developed the story about the longest…
I have blogged before about how animals can upset the applecart and create negative publicity. I am keen to talk about the positive use of publicity to make people and brands famous, but my research continues to stumble on gaffs made by publicists trying to lure the media with a tale involving animals. In 1950,…
Harry Reichenbach loved to use stunts to usurp commercial enterprise. He keenly kept an eye on the media and anything that was getting a lot of attention would be targeted with one of his left field stunts. Harry had used stunt drivers in the very early years to publicise fair grounds and circuses, but with…
After the success for the pharmaceutical company, Moran was employed by a lesser known modelling agency in Arkansas. To push this agency, Moran needed a real point of difference and after much thought, he created what became known as the “Cradle of Glamour” for a photocall. The idea was to create a Garden of Eden…
Jim Moran was employed to publicise a cosmetics arm of a major U.S. pharmaceutical company. Instead of the usual run of the mill celebrity endorsement, Moran decided to give the idea some intellectual thought and put a back story to the photo call that he organised. Moran used the well known “Delia Collins School of…
One of the biggest money spinners in PR at the moment is the contract for HDTV. Back in 1938 it was another technological break through that was in the headlines, albeit less hi tec. The radio exhibition at London’s Olympia was set up to promote radio hardware in an attempt to get more people to…
I have a gentleman named Paul Rigby to thank for a letter he sent me, informing me of one of Jim Moran’s genius stunts in Hollywood. Apparently Moran, who was wanting work in Tinseltown, approached a couple of Hollywood film studios to pitch for business. He posed as a Lithuanian film producer, even learning a…
The German Publicist Wolfgang Mayer created a publicity stunt that could have gone down in history had it not been for the unfortunate timing. Mayer was employed to turn around the fortunes of a little known caravan holiday company located in Bergen, north east of Hanover, who were interested in promoting long distance travel holidays…
Animals and children always carry a health risk for publicists and “Pastorale Kennels” realised this to their cost in the 1930’s. “Pastorale Kennels” was a well known breeding kennels in Minnesota in the 1930’s, who commissioned a clever idea for a picture to advertise themselves in other American States. Before one of the biggest kennel…
Having watched “Some Like It Hot” over the Christmas holiday, I was reminded of the controversy between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis. Image wise, Monroe did very well from this film, but Tony Curtis’ publicist put a different spin on things. He reported that Curtis had said kissing Monroe in “Some Like It Hot” was…