Like stunt marketing run amok but not really, since, hey, everyone’s doing it, St. Louis ageny Schupp Co. – which sounds more like a beer company than an agency – purchased a bunch of billboards for its client, the St. Louis Cardinals, then proceeded to steal the cardinal cut-out portion of the billboard. The agency, following stunt marketing protocol, created a fake MySpace (is there no other?) profile under the name of Bird Napper whose favorite activity is…wait for it…stealing birds from billboards. The profile contained other witticisms such as listing “Celebration” and “The Heat is On” as favorite songs – former pep songs for the Cardinals and for favorite movie, “anything but the last 20 minutes of Fever Pitch” – a nod to the Cardinals losss to the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series.
Of course, baseball fans and the media being what they/we are, the whole thing turned into a media circus with mentions on radio shows, TV news, local papers, an ESPN fan forum and the cardsclubhouse.com. In standard stunt fashion, Schupp Co. agency president Mark Schupp first denied any knowledge of the stunt then relented confessing to the stunt Monday afternoon, telling the St. Louis Dispatch, “Our goal was to create an advertising campaign outside the norm for our client. We did not approach the media with this story and frankly wanted to avoid the media until the campaign had unfolded.” Apparently, there’s some last chapter to the stunt that is supposed to occur today.
Is this good? Is this bad? Is this where marketing is headed? Please discuss on comments.
UPDATE: A commenter informs us we’ve all got it wrong: “Well, all of you, including all of St. Louis spoke a little too soon. This turned out not to be promoting the Cardinals but the radio station that just became the flagship station for the Cards. The missing birds actually ended up being slapped on the radio station’s billboard immediately following the Cardinal board. You have been double punked. Do you think the media (particularly the broadcast media) would have touched this with a 10 foot pole?”
