How Publicity Stunts Can Get Steemit on the Map!

It's hard to get anyone's attention these days.   It may never have been easy, but probably a lot harder now.  Most people are too busy, are naturally absorbed in their daily routines and overstimulated by and attached to their smartphones. Therefore unconventional marketing and publicity stunts are becoming even more important to get noticed and generate buzz. 

Branson the Master of PR Stunts 

Richard Branson is a master of stunts.  I didn't know much about Branson at the time he pulled a stunt for Virgin Galactic in 2004 and for many years after, but I did remember him as 'that guy in the spacesuit' that was the head of some company called Virgin.  Many people probably had similar vague impressions of him and the buzz and attention from the media elevated Branson's noteriety.   His showmanship continued throughout the years.  Here is a list:

• Tried to fly around the world in a hot air ballon 
• Put on a wedding dress 
• Drove a tank down 5th Ave in New York City
• Jumped off a the roof of a hotel casino 
• Dressed as a flight attendant 
• Dressed as a Zulu warrior 
• Drove across the English Channel in an amphibious car
• Drank champagne while rappelling down the side of a new Spaceport air hanger
• Starred as a gunslinger in a movie
• Posed as Elvis 
• Wore a kilt with naughty underwear 
• Wore a spacesuit for Virgin Galactic.
  

There are a number of good examples of publicity stunts in the book Traction, by Weinberg & Mares. During the hey day of the Dot com boom in 1999, the team at Half.com came up with the idea to rename the city of Halfway, Oregon to Half.com for one year.  Josh Kopelman, the founder went on the Today show with the mayor of Halfway for the company launch.  The New York Times, PBS and the WSJ covered the story, the company got 40 million impressions, and six months later eBay bought the company for $300 million.   

Another example was the payment company WePay.  Cofounder Rich Aberman and others went to Paypal's developer conference and placed a 600 pound block of ice at the conference entrance to highlight Paypal's reputation for freezing customer accounts. That drove a lot of attention and led to thousands of signups.  

Similarly DuckDuckGo bought a billboard ad in SF, seemingly in Google's backyard and home to many Google employees, to highlight privacy concerns.   

Another more subtle PR move was from the team at Grasshopper.com, a company that provides virtual phone systems for businesses and entrepreneurs.    Instead of submitting a typical press release, the team sent chocolate-covered grasshoppers and a package with a video to 5,000 influential people.  The company got tweets from influencers like Guy Kawaski who has millions of followers, tons of mainstream and social media attention, over a hundreds of thousands Youtube views and was written about in more than 150 blogs.  I think @stellabelle was on the right track sending a creative & memorable letter to Elon Musk.

Dogecoin Community   

The best examples of PR stunts in the cryptocurrency world mostly come from the Dogecoin community.  Dogecoin's main following congregated in a subreddit of the Reddit community and at one time was the fasted growing out of the 440,000 subreddits.  Here are some of the stunts the community came together for: 

• On Jan. 2014, the Dogecoin community raised $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled Team that qualified for, but could not afford to go to the Sochi Winter Olympics. 
• The Dogecoin foundation led by Eric Nakagawa raised about $30,000 for a well in the Tana river basin in Kenya. 
•  In March 2014 they raised about $55,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise.  

 The community also had parties like one in NY and another fun one at the Vancouver airport on New Year's day.

Conclusion:

We should pull a PR stunt.  

What should we do? We have to think big. It can be cheap and fun. It should be original.  

Who wants to step forward and put themselves out there?    

What can we do as a community?    

We can hold a contest similar to @the-alien's so we can try out many.

We can brainstorm as a community either on this thread or on Slack.  

We can select competitors such as Reddit or Medium and highlight the frustrations with those platforms.  

July 4th is coming up so that might be a good day for something.  

What say you?