Is Wake Up A Bad Protest Stunt Or A Bad PR Stunt?


So about an hour ago, a bunch of black envelopes arrived at the Allure offices, and, from the sounds of it, a number of other publishers as well. The addresses were written in what appears to be white chalk, and it looks like Intel and Apple were hit as well. Bad PR stunt? Bad protest stunt? Your guess is as good as mine — but it’s in terrible taste either way.

I’m used to getting slightly weird things land on my desk, under the assumption that something quirky will catch my eye; in the past couple of weeks these have included a water jug, a deck of playing cards, and some months ago, a Mariachi band with ice cream.

But getting an otherwise unmarked envelope, with dusty tones to it? Not cool. Not cool at all.

At the same time, it appears that a black clad group was chanting the same thing outside Sydney’s Apple store; Nate Burr tweeted the following pic

There’s also a bus

And it appears that it’s being used on billboards, in office lifts and in newspapers as well.

Which stinks of a dumb PR stunt far more than a genuine protest to me. A pretty poorly thought out PR stunt; while it’s got some attention, it’s attention of the creepy kind.

We’ve tossed a few theories around the office; possibly a Batman-themed prank, possibly one of Apple’s competitors (although you’d want to be careful with that one; their legal team doesn’t appear to have a sense of humour that it knows about), possibly some kind of tie-in to a soft drink?

A note to anyone sending me stuff; if you just send a powdery envelope, it doesn’t engage me; it creeps me out. Perhaps that’s just me.