Loop 033 printable

Volume 2, No. 9. May 24, 2002

Sick with success
This article uses frank language; but, then, so did the press release we received from the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California. Which is the point of this article. When one of the industry’s public relations professionals sends out a press release that discusses farts, belching, boogers, pus and ear wax in one sentence, it makes you take notice.

Which, of course, is the point of the press release. And that was nothing compared to the press packet that came later bearing a splotch of vomit on the cover and instructions on how to make your own mucus inside. What grabs the media’s attention can also tap into the public’s interest, so here came the Science Center's advertisements prominently featuring a little girl picking her nose and the headline “It snot what you think. It’s science!”

All of this was touting the show “Gross Me Out!” which took up residence at the Discovery Science Center in March and runs until June 2. And all of this worked. “The Orange County Register put three color photos (of the show) above the fold on the front of the local section and wrote a two-page article,” said Erin Marshall, the Discovery Science Center’s PR/marketing manager. “Everybody wanted to know who I paid off.”

The show talks about all of the body's byproducts that so dominate playground humor and puts them in their biological settings. Though the show, geared for kids, uses gross-out terminology to provide entree to the topics, the actual presentation is wholly educational and sneaks in some sermonizing on maintaining good habits, like covering your mouth when you sneeze and NOT picking your nose. “We’ve had parents come up and say, ‘Thank you. Our kids don’t listen to us, but they are finally listening to somebody,’” Marshall said.

Though she heard no negative feedback from her 463 media contacts, the advertisements did draw criticism from “less than a handful of people,” she said. “It is an ad that walks the edge, I’ll be honest. But the opposite response has been overwhelming. People are bringing their kids in to see the show either because they’ve seen the articles or the ad.”

While the ad walks the edge, the press kit plunges headlong into bad taste, and we don’t mean that in a judgmental sense but in a ...well, look at this cover.

What this picture cannot translate is the 3-D nature of that splotch.

The fake vomit is the product of a tight budget and one interesting evening in the Marshall kitchen. She could have purchased slabs of vomit for $3 apiece, she said, “but being a nonprofit I don’t have that kind of budget.” Instead, she took a latex leather mold, pine cones chipped to look like beef jerky and crushed up crayons—“Not the bright colors but the darker ones”—put it in the mold, mixed it all together, spooned it onto a metal plate, shaped it into splatters, let it dry for three days, peeled it up and used spray glue to mount it on the press kit. “It’s pretty gross,” Marshall said.

And she’s proud of it. “Where else but a science center can you make your own fake vomit and put it on a press kit and send it out? That’s the nice thing about here, I can be creative. I have to be. I can’t get away with four-color on my letterhead.” But she sure made up for that with a four-color-and-then-some splotch on those press kits.