There's no bad publicity

I meant to blog about this a week or so ago, but completely forgot.

A French website called "Mailorama" announced a few weeks ago that it was planning on renting a few double-decker busses and then driving them around Paris on November 14, throwing out bags of money worth several thousand euros, in an effort to promote their site. They assured the public that a few security guards had been hired to maintain order. When the Préfecture of Paris got wind of this, they immediately became concerned and put the stop down. After much negotiation, it was decided that Mailorama would be allowed to distribute the money at one location near the Eiffel Tower.

Word got out, and people - to the tune of 5,000 - flooded in from the nearby suburbs. It was not the crowd of Parisian yuppies that Mailorama had been hoping to target - instead, it was mainly unemployed young men who were ready to fight for those bags of money. The préfecture decided to cancel the event for security reasons, and out of frustration, some of the crowd began throwing apples and oranges around, while others took their anger out on local cars and/or stores.

Mailorama has now said that they will give roughly 100,000€ to the "Secours Populaire". And while the event was a complete failure, I guess it's done what they hoped to acoomplish- ie. get people talking about them....