Promotion Fail

You make it all the way through Friday the 13th and then this crap happens.

"Mailorama va distribuer des dizaines de milliers d'Euros en cash dans les rues de Paris," claims the Mailorama.fr website - at least for the moment. For the monolithically English speaking, that roughly translates to "Mailorama will distribute tens of thousands of euros in cash in the streets of Paris." Didn't work out that way.

Mailorama, an email marketing website in France, set out to promote their service by having a drive-by-giveaway, tossing envelopes of cash to people from a van as it passed the Eiffel Tower. However when an unexpectedly large crowd estimated at 5000 showed up, blocking traffic and causing safety concerns, police and  Mailorama agreed to call off the publicity stunt.

The disappointed crowd overturned a car. At least 10 people were arrested.

The Mailorama fiasco is right up there with other great promotional disasters. My favorites are the (real) Disco Demolition night and the (fake) WKRP Thanksgiving Giveaway.

Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago in 1979. Disco music, the signature music of the 70's, had divided the nation into those who could do The Hustle and those who couldn't. A growing rejection of what had become the Disco norm was spawning the New Wave and Punk movements, and in Chicago a disc jockey expressed his disdain for Disco by destroying Disco records by any means possible. His claim to fame came when he was scheduled to blow up boxes of LPs between games of a Chicago White Sox double-header.

The White Sox were owned by Bill Veeck, a shameless promoter who had once sent midget Eddie Gaedel up to bat in a major league baseball game. For him the Disco Demolition night was a no-brainer.

The demolition took place, but then, as with the Mailorama crowd, the scene turned ugly with hundreds of people coming onto the field and starting a bonfire in center field. The second game of the double header was cancelled (the White Sox ultimately forfeited the game - the last time an American League game was forfeited).

Still, IMHO, the best promotion failure was from the fictional WKRP radio station from the TV series of the same name. If you know the story it needs no explanation, and if you haven't, well, I won't spoil it for you, just watch the clip (sorry, can't find an embeddable version).

Sources:
CBS News
Mailorama

Toilets Lock After 5 Minutes

I just can't get enough public toilet stories. There was Seattle selling its fancy public toilets on eBay (at a 99.75% loss). There are the Paris public toilets that open after 15 minutes, whether you're finished or not. Now comes the story out of Klaipeda, Lithuania of their new toilet systems.

Vandalism is always a problem with public toilets, of course. To combat the vandalism problem, the Klaipeda Mayor's Office has set up the toilets to lock after 5 minutes.

After the toilet door locks, the only way to get out is to call a specialist who will detain the occupant while he examines the facilities for vandalism.

Brilliant.

And (talk about serendipity), when looking up other toilet-related stories I found one other reference to Klaipeda. In the July 20 archive of Neatorama there were two stories, one about Science Fiction Toilets, and another, remarkably, about the CATcerto, performed by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, which is a concerto with Nora the Piano Playing Cat at the keyboard (yet another cat video below).

Toilets that lock after 5 minutes and piano playing cats: Klaipeda may want to work on improving its image.



Sources:
Seattle Times
Europe for Visitors
All Voices
Google Maps
MSO News (via FolkD)
Neatorama
CATcerto
Wikipedia

One Way, My Way

On June 3rd of this year the French central government ceased overseeing municipal traffic planning decisions. The northern Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret (conservative) suffered from traffic flow problems on the D909 (aka Rue Victor Hugo). They undertook a traffic flow feasibility study and decided to convert the D909 into a one-way road where it entered the neighboring suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne (Socialist). Shockingly, the Clichy mayor took exception to this and yesterday declared that the Clichy section of the D909 would also be one way - into Levallois.

With drivers hurling themselves directly at each other like knights in a jousting tournament the local and national police were called in to direct traffic away from the conflicting roads. The French central government has interceded and ordered Clichy to return its portion of the D909 to being a two way street.

Sources:

inSing

The Straights Times

Yahaoo.ca

F***France (yes, that's really its name)

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