Eminem Incident: Fake Marketing or Real?
June 1, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Marketing
This morning at the water cooler, the conversation is likely to involve whether or not Bruno’s accident involving Eminem at the MTV Movie awards was real or simply a marketing ploy. If you haven’t seen the video, Bruno, a Sacha Baron Cohen character, landed crotch-first onto rapper Eminem’s face when attempting to fly over the crowd.
Credit: PictureGroup/MTV
Although many viewers believe that the incident is real, I have to wholeheartedly disagree. As someone who knows marketing, this just made too much sense. Eminem got some free publicity for his recently released album, while the “Bruno” character has a movie coming out in July. It’s simply too perfect to be an accident.
It’ll be interesting to see if MTV, Eminem, Bruno or Sacha Baron Cohen ever admit this was simply a marketing ploy. It must have been difficult to execute and it will get much deserved publicity, but there’s no way it is real.
For marketers, this is further proof that controversy sells — contrived or not.
If you want to read more about the Eminem incident, check out Jeanne Dupuis’ take over on Everyjoe about Eminem storming out of the MTV Movie Awards.
