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Plump passengers punk'd by Philly papers Who says word-of-mouth pranks are only for the kids at interactive agencies? Today’s editions of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com were filled with ads for the revolutionary airline “Derrie-Air,” which bases your ticket price on how much junk is in your trunk. The one-day hoax campaign was launched by the newspapers’ holding company and ad agency Gyro, who wanted to show that newspaper advertising is still a good way to get noticed. They’ll be tracking the traffic at FlyDerrie-Air.com, where you can read all about “the world's first carbon-neutral luxury airline.” Like any newspaper piece, I lost interest after a few paragraphs, but that didn’t stop me from catching this disturbingly sexual anecdote about fictional airline founder Dick Derrie: “Dick’s longing to plunge into Derrie-Air began in 1994, when he sent his first express package.” UPDATE: Editor & Publisher wonders if the newspapers went too far. —Posted by David Griner

June 6, 2008 in Griner | Permalink

Comments

This same idea was done years ago for newspapers in Singapore. It was a fictitious beer called XO which claimed to be the strongest beer available. Neil French was the guy behind it, I believe.

It's terribly unfair to show that you can get attention using newspaper ads when you have a product you know is going to raise some eyebrows. The agency should do it with one of its real clients and see if they can get the same results and buzz.

The only thing they are proving is that ads work best if the product is fake. Nice case study.

Posted by: A Caring Citizen | Jun 8, 2008 12:28:11 PM

Thing about French's strong dark brew was that it wasn't a "product that raised eyebrows" in this way, but rather made to follow a survey of exactly what people didn't want in a beer. They wanted light refreshing lagers with low alcohol so French 'made up' the exact opposite, did the ads, and people came knocking wanting to try the product. Eventually, they made the beer too.

But yeah, advertising something 'outrageous' that doesn't exist to prove newspaper ads work has been done.

Posted by: Dabitch | Jun 9, 2008 5:13:26 PM

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