I don’t think I have ever watched the New York Giants or Miami Dophins, even on television. Indeed I am not entirely clear what the NFL is and had never heard of Jason Taylor before last week, so I will not be rushing to Wembley on Sunday. I ran into this screen and the huge animatronic on my way to the Jubilee line at Canary Wharf.
As an animatronic it was fairly useless. The range of motion was extremely limited and he needed a huge JCB plugged into his back to stay upright. The eyes were ok. But compared with early Disney items at the theme parks (admittedly much smaller) it was fairly feeble.
It did not attract large crowds at Canary Wharf, at least whilst I was there – maybe two dozen two people clustered round to get free goodies (t-shirts or whatever) and watch the lumbering giant, and several dozen more glanced across on their way to or from the escalator.
But as a publicity stunt, it was an undoubted success. Lots of newspapers and magazines had a photo of Ken Livingstone with the giant’s hand way above his head in Trafalgar Square (the day before).
So the all-purpose recipe for getting a serious international campaign off the ground (like global warming) would seem to be:
(1) clear thinking about what the message is;
(2) inspired slogans (eg “weapons of mass destruction” – criminally misleading, but still inspired);
(3) inspired visual gimmicks (eg little Greenpeace boat in front of the supertanker);
(4) plenty of activists running around peddling (1) – (3);
(5) at least one country’s diplomatic service instructed to plug the message.
The cost is perhaps not that great, but you need some serious talent for (1) – (3) and some serious connections for (5).
Oddly enough, (4) is probably fairly easy to achieve. If you have a clear, exciting message and some good visuals, a flow of activists should follow fairly automatically. Of course, you need some competent organizers. (5) can come later, but without it translating all the activity into government action will be a tough slog.
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