Dropping Money from the Sky

Pseudo Events
Creating News

A pseudo event is an event that is staged in order to create news and bring publicity to an organization or person. Tung Desum Waringin is an Indonesian businessman and motivational speaker, who is famous for his publicity stunts. In 2005, he rode through Jakarta on horseback dressed as a well known war hero in order to promote his first book. Then in 2008, he created a publicity stunt to draw attention to his book, Marketing Revolution. This event involved dropping 100 million rupiah from an airplane, over the city of Serang.

I think that his publicity stunt was a clever and successful way of promoting his book. The book's message is how to "increase your wealth by 2000 percent within six months-or less-with marketing" and this stunt shows that he knows what he's talking about. Instead of spending millions of dollars on the promotion of his new book, he was able to draw international attention in a short time and with less money. The story was covered in the Jakarta Post, on CNN, and is all over the internet, on blogs and websites.

The stunt also drew world wide attention to the poverty in Indonesia, where most people live on less than $2 per day. During the event grown men were snatching money from the hands of small children. 100 million rupiah is only about $10, 740 American dollars and does not exactly put a dent in the poverty that is faced in Indonesia.

His book became a best seller following the event, proving that the attention he drew was positive and his stunt was a success.