Election Promotions: Are there no limits?

You may have already heard about this Pizza Hut promotion: as part of its election year "Pizza Party" campaign, Pizza Hut is offering free pizza for life (actually 30 years) if anyone in the audience at the town-hall style presidential debate had the audacity to ask the candidates: "Sausage or Pepperoni?"

There has been a torrent of negative publicity around this stunt - and rightly so, in my opinion.  I've never believed the saying that "there is no such thing as bad publicity."  Companies - especially big established companies - need to act responsibly, even if they're trying to be creative.  Pizza Hut has done some non-rational advertising and PR stunts before.  Perhaps you remember when they paid (a lot of money) to put the logo on the side of a Russian Proton rocket in 2001.  I wonder how they measured the return on that investment.  I can just imagine the creative team coming in to pitch the debate idea - and congratulating themselves on how "creative" they could be. 

I remember seeing a bumper sticker once that read:  Bizarre is Easy.  Creative is Hard.

Amen.