U2 stunt from EMG is yesterday's news

There was me thinking that agencies submitted their media stunts to Media Week on the basis of originality.

It was a cheeky e-mail from a colleague at Target NMI
that drew my attention to Media Week's Media Stunt in your November 8 issue - a projection onto the Houses Of Parliament for U2.

Gazing up at my wall, I stared at a framed page of Media Stunt Of The Week, November 6, 1998, I found myself looking at an image of U2 being projected onto the Houses of Parliament.

Was I dreaming or had you rerun the picture of a stunt that we had thought of four years ago for the launch of the previous U2 Greatest Hits album executed by Target?

This was the first time an image had been scanned onto Parliament from the Thames - a stunt that saw me nearly being arrested as our laser looked rather similar to that of a mortar.

We also arranged for our visual to be scanned on
buildings around the UK and, believe it or not, we ran tactical press ads and a "surprise" national outdoor campaign.

Consumers are also aware of things that have been done before.

With our projection for U2, the album went storming in at number one, while second time around it debuts at
number two.

Does this say anything about how people need new ideas to stimulate them?

It's interesting to see how EMG - a media agency "committed to innovation" - is executing such an old-hat
 formula.

Lucy Barclay

Director

This article was first published on Media Week