Promotional Events in Peculiar Places: Persistent Disasters and Polar Beach Parties

Abstract

On almost every day of the year, New York's Grand Central Station bustles with office workers and tourists passing strategically positioned street signs, maps, cafes, newspaper stands, and wall-to-wall advertisements of every shape, size, and colour. While the growing ubiquity of iconic signs or corporate logos-Nike's swoosh logo or Pepsi's red, white, and blue circle-seem likewise to meld into every facet of our lives, littering the eye-level horizon of our everyday time-space paths (Harvey 1990), the fragmentation or interruption of such commercial placements and messages have also become increasingly commonplace. During a typical rush hour in Grand Central Station, for instance, the number-one-selling tequila in the United States, Jose Cuervo, sponsored a concert of over one 100 tubas, aptly dubbed the Octuba Fest 1993. In an interview with the trade journal Brandweek, the Cuervo vice president responsible for the event's production posed the simple question: Consumers can either flip through a magazine looking at ads or they can be dancing to tequila songs played on a tuba.. . . Which do you think they'd rather do? (qtd. in Warner 1994: 18).