The Art of the Stunt: Comedian Living at IKEA!

They should teach it at Publicity School–the art of the publicity stunt. I’m not talking Janet Jackson’s wardrobe “malfunction”; that was just plain cheesy. This one is inspired!

A New York City comedian hit a home run for himself and Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA, with his latest pr play. On Monday Jan 7, Mark Malkoff, moved into IKEA while his New York apartment was being “fumigated for cockroaches”. The story is that he had nowhere to stay (funny, his wife seems to have found a place) so he called Sven or Nils or whoever runs IKEA and asked if he could have a sleepover. No marketing slouch itself, IKEA welcomed the guy with open arms. He’s staying till the 12th. The result. Both the comedian and IKEA are scoring big time. Malkoff gets publicity now and gets a documentary out of the deal (ie publicity later). Malkoff gets attention for his last venture, 171 Starbucks, while IKEA kicks it’s “goodwill-ometer” up a few notches and gets tons of extra eyeballs to spice up a normally chilly retailing month.

Not that hard to think of these things (I’ve been kicking around tons of ideas to promote my book in April)– the hard part is having the guts to implement. Bravo all around!