G-Force attaches to Apple’s coat tails to make its story fly

G-Force attaches to Apple’s coat tails to make its story fly

There is a great tendency in PR to think around, think through and think over the eternal problem of “how do we get this fundamentally boring product into the news?”.

Sometimes, as iPad case manufacturer G-Form, has shown, it’s easier to think through said problem than waste time with all those tricksy creative routes that are going to look smart in a pitch room but end up over-contrived when they come to the sell-in. The obvious route, in other words, is also the best.

So if you make ballistics-grade cases for the world’s most talked-about gadget, what do you do?

You find the most extreme ways of showing that your precious piece of kit will survive all manner of G-Form-inflicted falls and tumbles.

You set about creating a lovely piece of video showing your case protecting said technological wonder as it is dropped from 100,000 feet (where it had hitherto been teathered to a weather balloon before being forcibly sent plummeting back to earth).

The idea follows the pattern of the infamous “Will it Blend?” videos (whereby a variety of gadgets that were at the time newsworthy were placed in a BlendTec blender to show its qualities of endurance).

And indeed G-Form has been dropping iPads from ever-greater heights in their bid to make the news. They started off with a 60 foot fall onto concrete, followed by lobbing one off a hot air balloon and then dropping one from a plane. However, it is the space stunt that has captured the headlines.

Why does it work? Because, folks, it’s simple. A product demo taken to an extreme.

But more than that, it capitalises on the media-worthiness of Apple – there is a community of folk worldwide who will write about anything related to the beast of Cupertino. The thought that someone has gone out wilfully to destroy an iPad will no doubt have made them collectively clench their buttocks in disgust before they punch the air in delight as their beloved gadget hits the deck unscathed.

And it is that combination – the quest to be interesting in the simplest, most literal and extreme way possible, the quality of the video showing the feat unfold, itself dropped onto the bandwagon to which G-Force has attached its tall tale – that has meant that this is one story that has not fallen on stony ground.

This article was first published on PR Moment. But we thought that we would put it up here too. Just in case anyone missed it, I guess