Love Red Bull stunt. Embarrassed for Miami Herald. ow.ly/9ox5T
— John Landsberg (@BottomLineCom) March 1, 2012
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Did you see all the ads on the Miami Herald's front page today?
There's the ad at the bottom of the page for South Motors. And, if you missed that, there's the smaller ad for South Motors in the upper right hand corner of the page.
Is that it?
Not quite.
See that large photograph in the center of the page?. That's also an ad.
To commemorate "Leap Day", the folks at Red Bull came up with a stunt they hoped would get them some
Red Bull arranged to have base jumpers "leap" from four tall buildings in Miami, Detroit, Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
The Detroit jump was cancelled because of high winds.
But, the stunts went off as planned in the other three cities, including Miami.
But, only Miami Herald editors considered the stunt newsworthy; devoting a good part of the Thursday's front page to photo coverage of the jump.
(There's also a slide show on the Herald website.)
And, over at the Red Bull Public Relations HQ, they probably haven't stopped high-fiving each other. I'm sure in their wildest dreams, they never imagined their cheesy publicity stunt would actually end up on the front page of a major daily newspaper.
But, if I'm the ad manager at South Motors, I'm wondering why I have to pay to have my ad run in the paper, when Red Bull gets their ad published for free.
Bad for Miami Herald but just curious: What did TV stations do with this? It is interesting that Websites/blogs will rag on mainstream media while blanking on TV stations doing the same thing. Demographically, I'm sure Red Bull was far more interested in coverage on TV than in the paper, and far more interested in "coverage" on You Tube and Facebookers than anything else. Mainstream media now reacts/anticipates social media, which may be the really lamestream media out there.
ReplyDelete@ 12:34 - Good question.
DeleteAt least one TV station covered the stunt.
For the most part, I don't grade TV news operations on the same level as I grade the Herald.
This sort of thing is a natural for TV...great visuals. TV news has no shame.
I hold the Herald to higher standard.
Additionally, The Herald - on a daily basis - sets the agenda for the news coverage in this town.
At least two or three stories that Miami TV news outlets cover each day, originate in the Herald.
If the Herald ever stopped publishing, Miami TV news operations would be out of luck!