Four Highly Confusing Publicity Stunts
Don't Miss
They say all publicity is good publicity, and while “they” have clearly never faced down a social media mob, it’s true enough that even a stunt that backfires still gets people talking. It’s crucial that they know what to talk about, though. Some publicity stunts just leave people furrow-browed and mouths agape, asking questions like…
Don't Miss
What Is That Thing on the Empire State Building?
To promote the new season of House of the Dragon, HBO wrapped a giant inflatable dragon around the Empire State Building because New Yorkers have only positive associations with attacks from the sky. That actually wasn’t the problem — it was that the Empire State Building is famously tall. The 54th tallest in the world, in fact. That meant nobody on the street or without iconic cityscape views could tell what that thing was. Best guesses included a demon or the Hulk. Too bad there are no Avengers movies to promote.
What Does ‘IHOb’ Mean?
In 2018, IHOP announced on Twitter that it was changing its name to IHOb, did a sick kickflip and skateboarded away. For an entire month. It was particularly confusing because nothing about the restaurants had changed except for the small addition of a new line of burgers to the menu. Still, nobody cared enough about IHOP to put it together, so by the time they announced that the “B” was for burgers, and P.S., they’re changing their name back, it was quite literally a nothingburger. They tried a callback in 2019 by calling their new burgers “pancakes,” and everyone told them to shut up.
Why Are the M&M’s Mascots Gone? What Is Maya Rudolph Doing Here? ‘Ma&Ya’s’? What?
Remember “woke M&Ms”? If so, our condolences. All you need to know is some weirdos got mad about changes to the appearances of giant people-candies, so M&M’s released a statement that they would be retiring the mascots altogether and hiring Maya Rudolph as spokeswoman. There was nothing to indicate it was a joke until a commercial aired during the Super Bowl featuring Rudolph singing about “candy-coated clam bites” called “Ma&Ya’s,” after which the mascots reappeared in another commercial to confirm that they were back. So that accomplished… something.
Wait, Is Singapore Really Under Attack?
On September 29, 2015, a Twitter account calling itself Current Events Aggregate began publishing reports of a terrorist attack in Singapore. Over the course of half a dozen tweets, it breathlessly described an explosion at a research facility, traffic jams, military drones, riot police, quarantine zones and even quotes from a supposed army commander.
It seemed pretty weird that no one was covering it except this shady-looking account no one had ever heard of, but why would they fake this? To promote a video game, it turned out. Current Events Aggregate was just the official Call of Duty account in disguise, and it ended its thread claiming that the previous tweets were just “a glimpse into the future fiction of #BlackOps3.”
Of course, people who knew the game figured out what was going on immediately, and to be fair, they don’t get a lot of opportunities to mock people who had sex in high school. We’ll let them have this one.
